By Jonathan Cook
09/27/07 "ICH" -- -- Nazareth -- Israel's air strike on northern Syria earlier this month should be understood in the context of events unfolding since its assault last summer on neighboring Lebanon.
From the leaks so far, it seems that more than half a dozen Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace to drop munitions on a site close to the border with Turkey. We also know from the US media that the raid occurred in close coordination with the White House. But what was the purpose and significance of the attack?
It is worth recalling that, in the wake of Israel's month-long war against Lebanon a year ago, a prominent American neoconservative, Meyrav Wurmser, wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney's recently departed Middle East adviser, explained that the war had dragged on because the White House delayed in imposing a ceasefire. The neocons, she said, wanted to give Israel the time and space to expand the attack to Damascus.
The reasoning was simple: before an attack on Iran could be countenanced, Hizbullah in Lebanon had to be destroyed and Syria at the very least cowed. The plan was to isolate Tehran on these two other hostile fronts before going in for the kill.
But faced with constant rocket fire from Hizbullah last summer, Israel's public and military nerves frayed at the first hurdle. Instead Israel and the US were forced to settle for a Security Council resolution rather than a decisive military victory.
The immediate fallout of the failed attack was an apparent waning of neocon influence. The group's program of "creative destruction" in the Middle East -- the encouragement of regional civil war and the partition of large states that threaten Israel -- was at risk of being shunted aside.
Instead the "pragmatists" in the Bush Administration, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the new Defense Secretary Robert Gates, demanded a change of tack. The standoff reached a head in late 2006 when oilman James Baker and his Iraq Study Group began lobbying for a gradual withdrawal from Iraq -- presumably only after a dictator, this one more reliable, had again been installed in Baghdad. It looked as if the neocons' day in the sun had finally passed.
Israel's leadership understood the gravity of the moment. In January 2007 the Herzliya conference, an annual festival of strategy-making, invited no less than 40 Washington opinion-formers to join the usual throng of Israeli politicians, generals, journalists and academics. For a week the Israeli and American delegates spoke as one: Iran and its presumed proxy, Hizbullah, were bent on the genocidal destruction of Israel. Tehran's development of a nuclear program -- whether for civilian use, as Iran argues, or for military use, as the US and Israel claim -- had to be stopped at all costs.
While the White House turned uncharacteristically quiet all spring and summer about what it planned to do next, rumors that Israel was pondering a go-it-alone strike against Iran grew noisier by the day. Ex-Mossad officers warned of an inevitable third world war, Israeli military intelligence advised that Iran was only months away from the point of no return on developing a nuclear warhead, prominent leaks in sympathetic media revealed bombing runs to Gibraltar, and Israel started upping the pressure on several tens of thousands of Jews in Tehran to flee their homes and come to Israel.
While Western analysts opined that an attack on Iran was growing unlikely, Israel's neighbors watched nervously through the first half of the year as the vague impression of a regional war came ever more sharply into focus. In particular Syria, after witnessing the whirlwind of savagery unleashed against Lebanon last summer, feared it was next in line in the US-Israeli campaign to break Tehran's network of regional alliances. It deduced, probably correctly, that neither the US nor Israel would dare attack Iran without first clobbering Hizbullah and Damascus.
For some time Syria had been left in no doubt of the mood in Washington. It failed to end its pariah status in the post-9/11 period, despite helping the CIA with intelligence on al-Qaeda and secretly trying to make peace with Israel over the running sore of the occupied Golan Heights. It was rebuffed at every turn.
So as the clouds of war grew darker in the spring, Syria responded as might be expected. It went to the arms market in Moscow and bought up the displays of anti-aircraft missiles as well as anti-tank weapons of the kind Hizbullah demonstrated last summer were so effective at repelling Israel's planned ground invasion of south Lebanon.
As the Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld reluctantly conceded earlier this year, US policy was forcing Damascus to remain within Iran's uncomfortable embrace: "Syrian President Bashar al-Assad finds himself more dependent on his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, than perhaps he would like."
Israel, never missing an opportunity to wilfully misrepresent the behavior of an enemy, called the Syrian military build-up proof of Damascus' appetite for war. Apparently fearful that Syria might initiate a war by mistaking the signals from Israel as evidence of aggressive intentions, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, urged Syria to avoid a "miscalculation". The Israeli public spent the summer braced for a far more dangerous repeat of last summer's war along the northern border.
It was at this point -- with tensions simmeringly hot -- that Israel launched its strike, sending several fighter planes into Syria on a lightning mission to hit a site near Dayr a-Zawr. As Syria itself broke the news of the attack, Israeli generals were shown on TV toasting in the Jewish new year but refusing to comment.
Details have remained thin on the ground ever since: Israel imposed a news blackout that has been strictly enforced by the country's military censor. Instead it has been left to the Western media to speculate on what occurred.
One point that none of the pundits and analysts have noted was that, in attacking Syria, Israel committed a blatant act of aggression against its northern neighbor of the kind denounced as the "supreme international crime" by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.
Also, no one pointed out the obvious double standard applied to Israel's attack on Syria compared to the far less significant violation of Israeli sovereignty by Hizbullah a year earlier, when the Shia militia captured two Israel soldiers at a border post and killed three more. Hizbullah's act was widely accepted as justification for the bombardment and destruction of much of Lebanon, even if a few sensitive souls agonized over whether Israel's response was "disproportionate". Would these commentators now approve of similar retaliation by Syria?
The question was doubtless considered unimportant because it was clear from Western coverage that no one -- including the Israeli leadership -- believed Syria was in a position to respond militarily to Israel's attack. Olmert's fear of a Syrian "miscalculation" evaporated the moment Israel did the maths for Damascus.
So what did Israel hope to achieve with its aerial strike?
The stories emerging from the less gagged American media suggest two scenarios. The first is that Israel targeted Iranian supplies passing through Syria on their way to Hizbullah; the second that Israel struck at a fledgling Syrian nuclear plant where materials from North Korea were being offloaded, possibly as part of a joint nuclear effort by Damascus and Tehran.
(Speculation that Israel was testing Syria's anti-aircraft defences in preparation for an attack on Iran ignores the fact that the Israeli air force would almost certainly choose a flightpath through friendlier Jordanian airspace.)
How credible are these two scenarios?
The nuclear claims against Damascus were discounted so quickly by experts of the region that Washington was soon downgrading the accusation to claims that Syria was only hiding the material on North Korea's behalf. But why would Syria, already hounded by Israel and the US, provide such a readymade pretext for still harsher treatment? Why, equally, would North Korea undermine its hard-won disarmament deal with the US? And why, if Syria were covertly engaging in nuclear mischief, did it alert the world to the fact by revealing the Israeli air strike?
The other justification for the attack was at least based in a more credible reality: Damascus, Hizbullah and Iran undoubtedly do share some military resources. But their alliance should be seen as the kind of defensive pact needed by vulnerable actors in a Sunni-dominated region where the US wants unlimited control of Gulf oil and supports only those repressive regimes that cooperate on its terms. All three are keenly aware that it is Israel's job to threaten and punish any regimes that fail to toe the line.
Contrary to the impression being created in the West, genocidal hatred of Israel and Jews, however often Ahmadinejad's speeches are mistranslated, is not the engine of these countries' alliance.
Nonetheless, the political significance of the justifications for the Israeli air strike is that both neatly tie together various strands of an argument needed by the neocons and Israel in making their case for an attack on Iran before Bush leaves office in early 2009. Each scenario suggests a Shia "axis of evil", coordinated by Iran, that is actively plotting Israel's destruction. And each story offers the pretext for an attack on Syria as a prelude to a pre-emptive strike against Tehran -- launched either by Washington or Tel Aviv -- to save Israel.
That these stories appear to have been planted in the American media by neocon fanatics like John Bolton is warning enough -- as is the admission that the only evidence for Syrian malfeasance is Israeli "intelligence", the basis of which cannot be questioned as Israel is not officially admitting the attack.
It should hardly need pointing out that we are again in a hall of mirrors, as we were during the period leading up to America's invasion of Iraq and have been during its subsequent occupation.
Bush's "war on terror" was originally justified with the convenient and manufactured links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as well as, of course, those WMDs that, it later turned out, had been destroyed years earlier. But ever since Tehran has invariably been the ultimate target of these improbable confections.
There were the forged documents proving both that Iraq had imported enriched uranium from Niger to manufacture nuclear warheads and that it was sharing its nuclear know-how with Iran. And as Iraq fell apart, neocon operatives like Michael Ledeen lost no time in spreading rumors that the missing nuclear arsenal could still be accounted for: Iranian agents had simply smuggled it out of Iraq during the chaos of the US invasion.
Since then our media have proved that they have no less of an appetite for such preposterous tales. If Iran's involvement in stirring up its fellow Shia in Iraq against the US occupation is at least possible, the same cannot be said of the regular White House claims that Tehran is behind the Sunni-led insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few months ago the news media served up "revelations" that Iran was secretly conspiring with al-Qaeda and Iraq's Sunni militias to oust the US occupiers.
So what purpose does the constant innuendo against Tehran serve?
The latest accusations should be seen as an example of Israel and the neocons "creating their own reality", as one Bush adviser famously observed of the neocon philosophy of power. The more that Hizbullah, Syria and Iran are menaced by Israel, the more they are forced to huddle together and behave in ways to protect themselves -- such as arming -- that can be portrayed as a "genocidal" threat to Israel and world order.
Van Creveld once observed that Tehran would be "crazy" not to develop nuclear weapons given the clear trajectory of Israeli and US machinations to overthrow the regime. So equally Syria cannot afford to jettison its alliance with Iran or its involvement with Hizbullah. In the current reality, these connections are the only power it has to deter an attack or force the US and Israel to negotiate.
But they are also the evidence needed by Israel and the neocons to convict Syria and Iran in the court of Washington opinion. The attack on Syria is part of a clever hustle, one designed to vanquish or bypass the doubters in the Bush Administration, both by proving Syria's culpability and by provoking it to respond.
Condoleezza Rice, it emerged at the weekend, wants to invite Syria to attend the regional peace conference that has been called by President Bush for November. There can be no doubt that such an act of détente is deeply opposed by both Israel and the neocons. It reverses their strategy of implicating Damascus in the "Shia arc of extremism" and of paving the way to an attack on the real target: Iran.
Syria, meanwhile, is fighting back, as it has been for some time, with the only means available: the diplomatic offensive. For two years Bashar al-Assad has been offering a generous peace deal to Israel on the Golan Heights that Tel Aviv has refused to consider. This week, Syria made a further gesture towards peace with an offer on another piece of territory occupied by Israel, the Shebaa Farms. Under the plan, the Farms -- which the United Nations now agrees belongs to Lebanon, but which Israel still claims is Syrian and cannot be returned until there is a deal on the Golan Heights -- would be transferred to UN custody until the dispute over its sovereignty can be resolved.
Were either of Damascus' initiatives to be pursued, the region might be looking forward to a period of relative calm and security. Which is reason enough why Israel and the neocons are so bitterly opposed. Instead they must establish a new reality -- one in which the forces of "creative destruction" so beloved of the neocons engulf yet more of the region. For the rest of us, a simpler vocabulary suffices. What is being sold is catastrophe.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
Friday, September 28, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The Hidden Facts
Official Transcript
Free people of the world, we believe it is time to provide you with another updated report on the status of the war as we in the resistance factions perceive. We have several indications from the fields and from within the puppet government in Baghdad that the tactics used by the occupation forces have developed, yet the strategic aims that drive them, remains the same and in order to clarify the nature of such developments we must return to the facts.
The invasion of Iraq was based on lies mainly as we all must not forget, that the previous government was stocking weapons of mass destruction and had links to the infamous Al-Qaida. After the initial stages of this war, the world discovered the scale of the White House deception. To avoid accountability and responsibility, the declared reasons gradually shifted to spreading democracy and taking the war to them; as if the Iraqi people were responsible for the events of 9/11. Buying time, while testing different tactics to achieve any levels of success that maybe marketed as a victory or achievement, became a priority.
The project then collapsed, and the Pentagon woke up to a new reality. The Iraqi people did not welcome an invasion, as some traitors have guided. And the Iraqi Army which could not engage such a superior force with its outdated equipment in a classic battlefield, has handed over the cities to the occupier.
Large urban societies would require enormous financial support and the funds found in Iraq’s Banks would eventually disappear in the hands of looters. New funds would be required. Bush cannot simply ask for more funds from the US tax payer. But now that Bush controls Middle East Oil, he has no option but to increase the international price of oil, to cover the increasing cost of occupying our Country. This decision was the next mistake, we in the resistance were praying for. The additional revenues that would be available for Bush would also be available for other oil producing states, mainly Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. Each would benefit from the extra revenues in enforcing their position in the international arena. Russia today after five years is stronger and is rebuilding its previous glory. Iran, which aided US intervention in Afghanistan then Iraq succeeded in using US power to weaken two fronts; build a larger and more powerful army, fund its nuclear ambitions, and support any organization in the Middle East that is opposed to Israel and the US, regardless of sect or agenda, in an attempt to extort the US into giving any concessions a defeated and cornered White House could spare. Venezuela today nationalized many of its industries reviving its economy and having more to say, when it comes to oil pricing. China has a growth rate that is confidently reaching the 4th. As for Europe, it is lost in between. With a Euro currency too strong to allow a considerable rise in exports, a union which requires restructuring before accepting new members, a birth rate that is at its lowest due to strains and taxations on its working class, and energy requirements that increase along with costs, the future of Europe and its weak governments is not so promising. Europe, must find ways to enforce its own will and interests and work in conjunction with Russia to restore world stability and balance. As for the fragile sheikhdoms that export oil in the Arabian Gulf, we assure you that they are exporting at maximum output. They are also in fear of Iran which could easily cause havoc by firing a few missiles across the Gulf. This will devastate the stock markets, and booming property based industries which add up to their financial back bone. They also cannot publicly assist the Iraqi Resistance until the US simple evacuates to avoid being labeled as funders of terrorism.
In Iraq, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army, giving us more men and eagerness to free Iraq of its occupiers. And the amount of weapons stocks we stored will last us for fifty years if not more.
The White House faced with all this, decided that a puppet government would assist in reducing the financial and administration strains in Iraq, Bush then turned to the Kurdish Parties and the Persian backed militias for assistance. But, at what cost? Neither Turkey will accept an independent Kurdish state on its southern borders, nor Iran, will stop at simply aiding the US and easing its burden by controlling the south of Iraq and have the US concentrate their efforts on central Iraq. On the contrary, the puppet government’s ministries of influence such as the Interior and Defense, were handed over to the Iranian backed militias. Clarifying even more the secret arrangement between the US and Iran. Here the White House believed that by trying to enforce sectarian violence amongst Iraqis the level of attacks on US troops will be reduced, but this tactic, as we also predicted, has also failed. Iraqis have a high rate of intersect marriages, and that deprives anyone the ability to divide such a society by sect. Also the amount of killings and sadistic brutality of these militias has left the US and its puppet government in Baghdad exposed internationally. Today these militias, have become the major source of instability in Iraq.
We must also not forget that the atrocities at Abu-Ghraib prison and the use of chemical weapons on our civilians added to the failure. The Pentagon then increased the numbers of security contractors who have a high price tag, and gave them more field duties, this way if any are killed, there figures are not disclosed as is the case with the green-card soldiers. Also today the number of security contractors in Iraq is almost equal to the amount of military personnel. As for the Islamic Party which claims it represents the Sunnis in the puppet government; they have played all their cards with no positive gains, and more pressure is being enforced on them by us, to withdraw, and deprive it from its legal status. We know they will pull out sooner or later for they have nothing to offer to the Iraqi people. And staying in power will do more harm.
The Pentagon and under order of Rumsfield resorted to a new tactic. If Iraqis are not accepting what the US wants, they must simply leave Iraq. In essence, change people of Iraq. Make them refugees in neighboring countries until they dissolve in their host societies. And when these counties complain, bully or bribe them into silence. True, it will effect our people and create an imbalance in the composition of our society, but again to our advantage. Our people who leave as refugees will be safer, and when they find jobs whatever they may be, in neighboring countries, they provide the minimums for their families and acquire the working skills required to rebuild Iraq after victory.
Free people of the world as this conflict develops we are more sure of our predictions and analysis. And the foreign players in Iraq today have reached the state where their interest are no longer common. There is more to disagree on and conflict is present. And looking at all the details of the timeline of this conflict as we have explained, we do not see one correct decision or action taken on the part of the US. Not one single positive achievement. This by far, is the most costly pack of lies any criminal has come up with. This is why Bush today, is alone and isolated in his own little world. All his generals and strategists cannot offer him a solution. His people do not believe in him and his army of looters and thieves is lost, tired, and disoriented. The true reasons of this war as we all know is oil, world domination, corporate government, and the guarantee of existence to the so called state of Israel.
Here we must not forget that the Iraqi Resistance, and despite all the reservations that some might have, has set a unique example that will be studied by historians and analysts for years to come. Most importantly it has taught the world of oppressed nations and societies that a self sufficient resistance movement in our modern times is possible, and can destabilize the most powerful opponents let alone local governing bodies that cooperate with imperial powers. They are much easier to remove and eradicate and this reverses the known equation. One free man, can change the outcome of a day.
The Resistance has proved to the world that it is through morality and determination that you can achieve and gain your rights and that ideological pretext that is marketed by the US media as being the cause of this war, is nothing but another lie. Religions have coexisted for thousands of years in peace, why is it now a problem. Idealogic and religious fanaticism on all sides is only the excuse and not the reason which is economic gain and influence. The Resistance has also proved that the highly consumable capital based economies cannot fight long wars, and their greed for energy to sustain a specific lifestyle will eventually grind humanity into a global market of exploitation and slavery only to be followed by total collapse. Capitalism as is tested more and more with less energy available will eventually fail.
In all what we have stated, we are proud to say that the Iraqi Resistance has and continues to redefine the meaning of the word conquest .
We also extend our hands again and again to those troops in Iraq who are still holding on to their morality and humanity, to those who do not want to be part of this crime, that the doors of our mosques and churches will always remain open for. And we in the resistance will honor your humanity and will assist you in discreetly taking you out of Iraq into neighboring countries where you will not be prosecuted and labeled as deserters. We know there are many amongst you who want to leave, but we can only help if you gather the courage to express sorrow, remorse, and detachment from this crime.
We have smuggled out tens and tens of honest men who thought they were coming to Iraq for a cause. Only a few cases such as US Marine Wassef Ali Hasoun who was captured then during interrogation it was clearly evident that this man was not a criminal and thus, we could not harm him. We undertook the task of taking him out of Iraq to safety. We are usually more heavy handed with punishment, when we find people of Arab or Iraqi origin who aid the US.
Another is a supplies driver by the name of Mohammad Ali Sanad, who was working for a Kuwaiti company that was supplying goods to US Bases. During interrogation and extensive dialogue it was clearly evident that this man was sorry for what he did, even the transport company he worked for, known as “Faisal al Neheet” stopped its cooperation with the occupation, closed its offices in Baghdad, and left. He was also released and these are only two examples that we can declare only because the cases went public, as we do not intend to jeopardize the lives of others we helped.
We also extend our appreciation and respect to all the honorable people around the world, the heroes of dignity and freedom, the brave men and women of the anti-globalization and Peace movements. We in Iraq are thankful and grateful for all what you have done and your continued efforts to end this conflict and confront the white collar criminals of corporate governments. May God bless you all and continue to engulf you with patients and resolve.
To the American people we say, you have finally awakened and the millions of honorable people amongst you have now realized that the Iraqi people are not your enemies, and they are not responsible for your grief. It is your troops which occupied our country, and not us yours. The arrogant war criminal who rules in your name has humiliated your nation & military honor and we believe, that a democracy that is not willing to fight for its own freedom, is no better that a raw dictatorship. Your great efforts to remove the ware criminal from the White House has changed the equation in your government tremendously. But it to great disappointment that Bush is insisting even more in his arrogance to go against your will in ending this war. Bush does not respect his own people and we believe that because he knows that a political solution will not be reached
with the Iraqi Resistance, he will leave to democrats a heavy burden by the time he leaves office. He cannot comprehend that a few good men have brought has project in the Middle East to a complete halt. Bush cannot stay in Iraq where he is caught between the fire of the resistance and that of Iran.
And if he leaves after all these losses and humiliation the oil rich south of Iraq will be in the hands of Iran. And this is what US strategy cannot accept. Bush’s last attempt and revenge will be to pull out of Iraq and plan its disintegration into 3 geographically carved states. Then strike the strategic assets of Iran, to bring its already strained economy down to collapse.
Thus the democrats will be left with a Middle East that is even more unstable than it is now. And despite our knowledge that when it comes to strategic interests both parties do not conflict and it is only the methods that bear the difference, The democrats have a chance to end this conflict in a face saving solution for the US, by first declaring that they recognize the factions of the Iraqi resistance as the representatives of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Republic. After which a negotiating team would be arranged to negotiate your troop withdrawal, compensation of Iraq, and matters of future interest. It is only through the Iraqi resistance, that a solution may be born.
Finally we say to Bush and those behind him. You can go all you want with your plans, strategies, and executions, and we with ours. Lead your troops into battle with every high tech gadgetry and equipment, military science as ever developed, and we will go as primitive and creative as we can, creating the necessary gap that continues to deprive you of the upper hand. Attack with all your force if we leave you a trace, for so many traces were left for fool & arrogant. Hide all you true casualties and we will deprive you of new recruits. Raise the oil prices more and strengthen other aspiring nations & we will deprive you of ours, then raise the cost of occupation till we break your bones in Baghdad and Babylon.
Wander the shelves of history in search of methods to adapt, and we will confront you with a form of variable, adaptable, and reversible asymmetric warfare that will set the standard for years and years to come.
And may the best man win !
The Nineteen Twenty Revolution Brigades
Media Office
Baghdad, on the 8th of September 2007
شبكة البصرة
الثلاثاء 13 رمضان 1428 / 25 أيلول 2007
يرجى الاشارة الى شبكة البصرة عند اعادة النشر او الاقتباس
http://www.albasrah.net/ar_articles_2007/0907/kt2b20_250907.htm
Free people of the world, we believe it is time to provide you with another updated report on the status of the war as we in the resistance factions perceive. We have several indications from the fields and from within the puppet government in Baghdad that the tactics used by the occupation forces have developed, yet the strategic aims that drive them, remains the same and in order to clarify the nature of such developments we must return to the facts.
The invasion of Iraq was based on lies mainly as we all must not forget, that the previous government was stocking weapons of mass destruction and had links to the infamous Al-Qaida. After the initial stages of this war, the world discovered the scale of the White House deception. To avoid accountability and responsibility, the declared reasons gradually shifted to spreading democracy and taking the war to them; as if the Iraqi people were responsible for the events of 9/11. Buying time, while testing different tactics to achieve any levels of success that maybe marketed as a victory or achievement, became a priority.
The project then collapsed, and the Pentagon woke up to a new reality. The Iraqi people did not welcome an invasion, as some traitors have guided. And the Iraqi Army which could not engage such a superior force with its outdated equipment in a classic battlefield, has handed over the cities to the occupier.
Large urban societies would require enormous financial support and the funds found in Iraq’s Banks would eventually disappear in the hands of looters. New funds would be required. Bush cannot simply ask for more funds from the US tax payer. But now that Bush controls Middle East Oil, he has no option but to increase the international price of oil, to cover the increasing cost of occupying our Country. This decision was the next mistake, we in the resistance were praying for. The additional revenues that would be available for Bush would also be available for other oil producing states, mainly Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. Each would benefit from the extra revenues in enforcing their position in the international arena. Russia today after five years is stronger and is rebuilding its previous glory. Iran, which aided US intervention in Afghanistan then Iraq succeeded in using US power to weaken two fronts; build a larger and more powerful army, fund its nuclear ambitions, and support any organization in the Middle East that is opposed to Israel and the US, regardless of sect or agenda, in an attempt to extort the US into giving any concessions a defeated and cornered White House could spare. Venezuela today nationalized many of its industries reviving its economy and having more to say, when it comes to oil pricing. China has a growth rate that is confidently reaching the 4th. As for Europe, it is lost in between. With a Euro currency too strong to allow a considerable rise in exports, a union which requires restructuring before accepting new members, a birth rate that is at its lowest due to strains and taxations on its working class, and energy requirements that increase along with costs, the future of Europe and its weak governments is not so promising. Europe, must find ways to enforce its own will and interests and work in conjunction with Russia to restore world stability and balance. As for the fragile sheikhdoms that export oil in the Arabian Gulf, we assure you that they are exporting at maximum output. They are also in fear of Iran which could easily cause havoc by firing a few missiles across the Gulf. This will devastate the stock markets, and booming property based industries which add up to their financial back bone. They also cannot publicly assist the Iraqi Resistance until the US simple evacuates to avoid being labeled as funders of terrorism.
In Iraq, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army, giving us more men and eagerness to free Iraq of its occupiers. And the amount of weapons stocks we stored will last us for fifty years if not more.
The White House faced with all this, decided that a puppet government would assist in reducing the financial and administration strains in Iraq, Bush then turned to the Kurdish Parties and the Persian backed militias for assistance. But, at what cost? Neither Turkey will accept an independent Kurdish state on its southern borders, nor Iran, will stop at simply aiding the US and easing its burden by controlling the south of Iraq and have the US concentrate their efforts on central Iraq. On the contrary, the puppet government’s ministries of influence such as the Interior and Defense, were handed over to the Iranian backed militias. Clarifying even more the secret arrangement between the US and Iran. Here the White House believed that by trying to enforce sectarian violence amongst Iraqis the level of attacks on US troops will be reduced, but this tactic, as we also predicted, has also failed. Iraqis have a high rate of intersect marriages, and that deprives anyone the ability to divide such a society by sect. Also the amount of killings and sadistic brutality of these militias has left the US and its puppet government in Baghdad exposed internationally. Today these militias, have become the major source of instability in Iraq.
We must also not forget that the atrocities at Abu-Ghraib prison and the use of chemical weapons on our civilians added to the failure. The Pentagon then increased the numbers of security contractors who have a high price tag, and gave them more field duties, this way if any are killed, there figures are not disclosed as is the case with the green-card soldiers. Also today the number of security contractors in Iraq is almost equal to the amount of military personnel. As for the Islamic Party which claims it represents the Sunnis in the puppet government; they have played all their cards with no positive gains, and more pressure is being enforced on them by us, to withdraw, and deprive it from its legal status. We know they will pull out sooner or later for they have nothing to offer to the Iraqi people. And staying in power will do more harm.
The Pentagon and under order of Rumsfield resorted to a new tactic. If Iraqis are not accepting what the US wants, they must simply leave Iraq. In essence, change people of Iraq. Make them refugees in neighboring countries until they dissolve in their host societies. And when these counties complain, bully or bribe them into silence. True, it will effect our people and create an imbalance in the composition of our society, but again to our advantage. Our people who leave as refugees will be safer, and when they find jobs whatever they may be, in neighboring countries, they provide the minimums for their families and acquire the working skills required to rebuild Iraq after victory.
Free people of the world as this conflict develops we are more sure of our predictions and analysis. And the foreign players in Iraq today have reached the state where their interest are no longer common. There is more to disagree on and conflict is present. And looking at all the details of the timeline of this conflict as we have explained, we do not see one correct decision or action taken on the part of the US. Not one single positive achievement. This by far, is the most costly pack of lies any criminal has come up with. This is why Bush today, is alone and isolated in his own little world. All his generals and strategists cannot offer him a solution. His people do not believe in him and his army of looters and thieves is lost, tired, and disoriented. The true reasons of this war as we all know is oil, world domination, corporate government, and the guarantee of existence to the so called state of Israel.
Here we must not forget that the Iraqi Resistance, and despite all the reservations that some might have, has set a unique example that will be studied by historians and analysts for years to come. Most importantly it has taught the world of oppressed nations and societies that a self sufficient resistance movement in our modern times is possible, and can destabilize the most powerful opponents let alone local governing bodies that cooperate with imperial powers. They are much easier to remove and eradicate and this reverses the known equation. One free man, can change the outcome of a day.
The Resistance has proved to the world that it is through morality and determination that you can achieve and gain your rights and that ideological pretext that is marketed by the US media as being the cause of this war, is nothing but another lie. Religions have coexisted for thousands of years in peace, why is it now a problem. Idealogic and religious fanaticism on all sides is only the excuse and not the reason which is economic gain and influence. The Resistance has also proved that the highly consumable capital based economies cannot fight long wars, and their greed for energy to sustain a specific lifestyle will eventually grind humanity into a global market of exploitation and slavery only to be followed by total collapse. Capitalism as is tested more and more with less energy available will eventually fail.
In all what we have stated, we are proud to say that the Iraqi Resistance has and continues to redefine the meaning of the word conquest .
We also extend our hands again and again to those troops in Iraq who are still holding on to their morality and humanity, to those who do not want to be part of this crime, that the doors of our mosques and churches will always remain open for. And we in the resistance will honor your humanity and will assist you in discreetly taking you out of Iraq into neighboring countries where you will not be prosecuted and labeled as deserters. We know there are many amongst you who want to leave, but we can only help if you gather the courage to express sorrow, remorse, and detachment from this crime.
We have smuggled out tens and tens of honest men who thought they were coming to Iraq for a cause. Only a few cases such as US Marine Wassef Ali Hasoun who was captured then during interrogation it was clearly evident that this man was not a criminal and thus, we could not harm him. We undertook the task of taking him out of Iraq to safety. We are usually more heavy handed with punishment, when we find people of Arab or Iraqi origin who aid the US.
Another is a supplies driver by the name of Mohammad Ali Sanad, who was working for a Kuwaiti company that was supplying goods to US Bases. During interrogation and extensive dialogue it was clearly evident that this man was sorry for what he did, even the transport company he worked for, known as “Faisal al Neheet” stopped its cooperation with the occupation, closed its offices in Baghdad, and left. He was also released and these are only two examples that we can declare only because the cases went public, as we do not intend to jeopardize the lives of others we helped.
We also extend our appreciation and respect to all the honorable people around the world, the heroes of dignity and freedom, the brave men and women of the anti-globalization and Peace movements. We in Iraq are thankful and grateful for all what you have done and your continued efforts to end this conflict and confront the white collar criminals of corporate governments. May God bless you all and continue to engulf you with patients and resolve.
To the American people we say, you have finally awakened and the millions of honorable people amongst you have now realized that the Iraqi people are not your enemies, and they are not responsible for your grief. It is your troops which occupied our country, and not us yours. The arrogant war criminal who rules in your name has humiliated your nation & military honor and we believe, that a democracy that is not willing to fight for its own freedom, is no better that a raw dictatorship. Your great efforts to remove the ware criminal from the White House has changed the equation in your government tremendously. But it to great disappointment that Bush is insisting even more in his arrogance to go against your will in ending this war. Bush does not respect his own people and we believe that because he knows that a political solution will not be reached
with the Iraqi Resistance, he will leave to democrats a heavy burden by the time he leaves office. He cannot comprehend that a few good men have brought has project in the Middle East to a complete halt. Bush cannot stay in Iraq where he is caught between the fire of the resistance and that of Iran.
And if he leaves after all these losses and humiliation the oil rich south of Iraq will be in the hands of Iran. And this is what US strategy cannot accept. Bush’s last attempt and revenge will be to pull out of Iraq and plan its disintegration into 3 geographically carved states. Then strike the strategic assets of Iran, to bring its already strained economy down to collapse.
Thus the democrats will be left with a Middle East that is even more unstable than it is now. And despite our knowledge that when it comes to strategic interests both parties do not conflict and it is only the methods that bear the difference, The democrats have a chance to end this conflict in a face saving solution for the US, by first declaring that they recognize the factions of the Iraqi resistance as the representatives of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Republic. After which a negotiating team would be arranged to negotiate your troop withdrawal, compensation of Iraq, and matters of future interest. It is only through the Iraqi resistance, that a solution may be born.
Finally we say to Bush and those behind him. You can go all you want with your plans, strategies, and executions, and we with ours. Lead your troops into battle with every high tech gadgetry and equipment, military science as ever developed, and we will go as primitive and creative as we can, creating the necessary gap that continues to deprive you of the upper hand. Attack with all your force if we leave you a trace, for so many traces were left for fool & arrogant. Hide all you true casualties and we will deprive you of new recruits. Raise the oil prices more and strengthen other aspiring nations & we will deprive you of ours, then raise the cost of occupation till we break your bones in Baghdad and Babylon.
Wander the shelves of history in search of methods to adapt, and we will confront you with a form of variable, adaptable, and reversible asymmetric warfare that will set the standard for years and years to come.
And may the best man win !
The Nineteen Twenty Revolution Brigades
Media Office
Baghdad, on the 8th of September 2007
شبكة البصرة
الثلاثاء 13 رمضان 1428 / 25 أيلول 2007
يرجى الاشارة الى شبكة البصرة عند اعادة النشر او الاقتباس
http://www.albasrah.net/ar_articles_2007/0907/kt2b20_250907.htm
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Blackwater in gray area again
By E.A. Torriero | Tribune staff reporter
September 19, 2007
Banned by the Iraqi government after a shooting in Baghdad that left at least eight Iraqis dead, the American security firm Blackwater USA is sure to draw more fire from opponents who see the North Carolina-based company as an unregulated army.
But for supporters, the incident only bolsters Blackwater. They hail the company's work as a heroic necessity and say the incident will enhance Blackwater as it expands its business of training law-enforcement officers domestically and abroad while seeking more lucrative government contracts for international work.
"It's going to be good for their business; they were doing their job this week and doing it well," said Gordon Hammers, chairman of a county land-use planning advisory group in eastern San Diego County who favors Blackwater's plan to open a giant training facility on a former chicken ranch there.
Bottom line
"No Americans were killed," said Hammers, who is facing a local recall election for his support of Blackwater. "That is the bottom line. It only shows Americans how valuable their expertise is in training our law enforcement. We need them."
The Iraqi government, however, is debating whether it wants Blackwater or any other foreign security company to remain as outrage over the incident mounted.
After ordering Blackwater to leave the country Monday, government officials said Tuesday that they will review the status of all security firms working there. More than 25,000 security contractors work in Iraq. Blackwater, which has at least 1,000 workers on the ground, is one of three companies contracted by the U.S. State Department to guard its employees in Iraq, and its expulsion could create huge problems.
The embassy on Tuesday suspended all ground travel for its diplomats across Iraq.
The most recent trouble began when Blackwater security guards protecting a U.S. motorcade in Baghdad on Sunday responded to what the company said was militant gunfire. Officials are investigating what happened, but Iraqi authorities accused the guards of firing on innocent civilians.
Iraqi officials appeared to be softening their stance against Blackwater on Tuesday amid back-door diplomacy by the Bush administration.
Some Iraqi leaders called for the Blackwater guards to be tried in Iraqi courts, but U.S. officials in 2004 granted its private security contractors legal protection from prosecution in Iraq and the United States.
Blackwater defended itself in a statement Tuesday.
"Blackwater regrets any loss of life, but this convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job to defend human life," said Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell.
The incident is the latest in a string of controversies involving Blackwater.
The company burst into the public eye in Iraq when four Blackwater guards were killed in 2004. Their bodies were burned, and the remains of two were strung from a bridge.
Blackwater has become a lightning rod for virulent anti-war passions and critics of the Bush administration's war policies, and the company has been in a protracted legal fight with families of the dead men, which are seeking compensation.
Blackwater's appearance in Illinois this year also has generated protests.
After the Tribune reported this summer about possible conflicts of interest in a business arrangement between the University of Illinois police training institute and Blackwater, the university severed its ties with the company. The university administrator who brokered the contract and then worked for Blackwater on his vacation training police forces in Afghanistan resigned this month.
Company undeterred
But Blackwater appears undeterred in its push to expand its business in the U.S. With a possible end to the U.S. mission in Iraq in the next few years, Blackwater has been shifting its emphasis to local and international law-enforcement training, analysts say.
Besides its sprawling training facility in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater opened a domestic law-enforcement training center in western Illinois in the spring that has trained hundreds of officers from as far away as New York, the company said.
Blackwater operates the facility privately and does not have state certification to train police in the state. Peace groups in Illinois have picketed the site and vow a protest march from Chicago this fall.
Sunday's incident "gives us real concern as to what they will be up to domestically," said Christian Stalberg, who is organizing an opposition group called Blackwater Watch near company headquarters in North Carolina. "Congress needs to act to put a brake on them because they are totally unregulated."
But so far, experts say, this week's incident will probably do no damage to the company's ability to gain lucrative contracts from the Bush administration, to which it has political connections.
September 19, 2007
Banned by the Iraqi government after a shooting in Baghdad that left at least eight Iraqis dead, the American security firm Blackwater USA is sure to draw more fire from opponents who see the North Carolina-based company as an unregulated army.
But for supporters, the incident only bolsters Blackwater. They hail the company's work as a heroic necessity and say the incident will enhance Blackwater as it expands its business of training law-enforcement officers domestically and abroad while seeking more lucrative government contracts for international work.
"It's going to be good for their business; they were doing their job this week and doing it well," said Gordon Hammers, chairman of a county land-use planning advisory group in eastern San Diego County who favors Blackwater's plan to open a giant training facility on a former chicken ranch there.
Bottom line
"No Americans were killed," said Hammers, who is facing a local recall election for his support of Blackwater. "That is the bottom line. It only shows Americans how valuable their expertise is in training our law enforcement. We need them."
The Iraqi government, however, is debating whether it wants Blackwater or any other foreign security company to remain as outrage over the incident mounted.
After ordering Blackwater to leave the country Monday, government officials said Tuesday that they will review the status of all security firms working there. More than 25,000 security contractors work in Iraq. Blackwater, which has at least 1,000 workers on the ground, is one of three companies contracted by the U.S. State Department to guard its employees in Iraq, and its expulsion could create huge problems.
The embassy on Tuesday suspended all ground travel for its diplomats across Iraq.
The most recent trouble began when Blackwater security guards protecting a U.S. motorcade in Baghdad on Sunday responded to what the company said was militant gunfire. Officials are investigating what happened, but Iraqi authorities accused the guards of firing on innocent civilians.
Iraqi officials appeared to be softening their stance against Blackwater on Tuesday amid back-door diplomacy by the Bush administration.
Some Iraqi leaders called for the Blackwater guards to be tried in Iraqi courts, but U.S. officials in 2004 granted its private security contractors legal protection from prosecution in Iraq and the United States.
Blackwater defended itself in a statement Tuesday.
"Blackwater regrets any loss of life, but this convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job to defend human life," said Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell.
The incident is the latest in a string of controversies involving Blackwater.
The company burst into the public eye in Iraq when four Blackwater guards were killed in 2004. Their bodies were burned, and the remains of two were strung from a bridge.
Blackwater has become a lightning rod for virulent anti-war passions and critics of the Bush administration's war policies, and the company has been in a protracted legal fight with families of the dead men, which are seeking compensation.
Blackwater's appearance in Illinois this year also has generated protests.
After the Tribune reported this summer about possible conflicts of interest in a business arrangement between the University of Illinois police training institute and Blackwater, the university severed its ties with the company. The university administrator who brokered the contract and then worked for Blackwater on his vacation training police forces in Afghanistan resigned this month.
Company undeterred
But Blackwater appears undeterred in its push to expand its business in the U.S. With a possible end to the U.S. mission in Iraq in the next few years, Blackwater has been shifting its emphasis to local and international law-enforcement training, analysts say.
Besides its sprawling training facility in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater opened a domestic law-enforcement training center in western Illinois in the spring that has trained hundreds of officers from as far away as New York, the company said.
Blackwater operates the facility privately and does not have state certification to train police in the state. Peace groups in Illinois have picketed the site and vow a protest march from Chicago this fall.
Sunday's incident "gives us real concern as to what they will be up to domestically," said Christian Stalberg, who is organizing an opposition group called Blackwater Watch near company headquarters in North Carolina. "Congress needs to act to put a brake on them because they are totally unregulated."
But so far, experts say, this week's incident will probably do no damage to the company's ability to gain lucrative contracts from the Bush administration, to which it has political connections.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Mr Bush, your sheikh is dead
By Pepe Escobar
Some may call it divine providence, some may call it Allah's bidding; in the end it was up to real Iraq to intervene and shatter the "surge is a success" story sold to US and world public opinion by President George W Bush and his top man in Iraq, General David Petraeus. Only hours before Bush recommended to the nation and the world what he had told Petraeus to recommend to Congress - in
essence his roadmap toward counterinsurgency and endless military occupation of Iraq - a key player in the "success" story was killed, significantly right at the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha - along with his two bodyguards - was killed by a roadside bomb planted near his home in Ramadi, the capital of an Anbar province Petraeus had sworn was "pacified". Abu Risha, 37, was the leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, renamed Anbar Awakening - an alliance of about 200 Sunni sheikhs drawn mostly from the Dulaimi tribe and dozens of sub-clans who were fighting against al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers.
In his speech, Bush outlined the plan to leave more than 130,000 troops in the battle zone in Iraq next year, unless Petraeus and Bush decide further withdrawals are possible before that. With regard to Abu Risha's killing, as far as the White House is concerned it was the work of al-Qaeda (12 mentions of "al-Qaeda" in Bush's speech). Were this to be the case, the "don't mess with us" al-Qaeda message couldn't be more devastating. Consider the chain of events of the past few days.
In a carefully stage-managed piece of theater, Bush visits al-Asad military air base in Anbar (not real Iraq) to stress his "surge" is working. He personally meets Abu Risha.
Osama bin Laden, looking like a clone of himself with a stick-on beard, releases his first video in almost three years, proving he's alive and kicking. The video may or may be not be a fake.
Petraeus and US Ambassador in Iraq Ryan Crocker start their presentation in front of Congress, assuring the US and the world the "surge" is a "success".
Bin Laden releases his second tape in four days, praising one of the September 11, 2001, "martyrs". His image is on freeze-frame; his lips do not move.
Bush announces he will recommend to the nation what he told Petraeus to recommend to Congress: not a drawdown, but the actual extension of the "surge" until next summer.
Abu Risha, the man Petraeus relied on for the "success" of the "surge", is killed in Anbar.
No wonder Petraeus defined it as "a tragic loss". The hit on Bush's sheikh happened just 10 days after they met. Al-Qaeda had plenty of motives to order the hit. But so did other key players.
No Iraqi guerrilla or jihadist group claimed responsibility. Abu Risha was the most visible of the 200 or so sheikhs in Anbar Awakening. They were mostly from the Dulaimi tribe. Al-Qaeda has a close bond with the Mashadani tribe.
This could well have been an inter-tribal payback. Sheikh Jubeir Rashid, also part of the council, cryptically said that "such an attack was expected", but they "are determined to strike back". Abu Risha may have also been killed by one of the top Sunni Iraqi-nationalist guerrilla groups for which throwing the occupation out remains the top priority - way beyond fighting the Shi'ite-dominated government in the Green Zone or Shi'ite militias. Al-Qaeda may boast a maximum of 800 or so jihadis in Iraq.
The Sunni resistance has more than 100,000 fighters. The White House hurricane of spinning has simply erased the anti-occupation Sunni resistance masses from the ground. Marc Lynch, an expert on Arab media and Sunni politics at George Washington University in Washington, called remarks by Petraeus on Abu Risha's importance "a leap to judgment emblematic of all which is wrong with America's current views of the Sunnis of Iraq", Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service reported. "In reality, there are a plethora of likely suspects, reflecting the reality of an intensely factionalized and divided community which little resembles the picture offered by the administration's defenders," Lynch said. "Leaders of other tribes deeply resented Abu Risha's prominence.
Leaders of the major insurgency factions had for weeks been warning against allowing people such as Abu Risha to illegitimately reap the fruits of their jihad against the occupation," Lynch said. Petraeus' chaos strategy Anbar is not pacified, contrary to official line, and Petraeus's tactics once again are deceptive. When in late 2005 he was writing the new Pentagon counterinsurgency manual, he was heavy on "paramilitary units" and "specialized paramilitary strike forces". These are actually the new Petraeus-supported and armed actors in Anbar: hardcore Sunni militias. Some of their foot soldiers - receiving a handsome US$900 monthly salary in a land of 70% unemployment - are formerly unemployed "irregulars"; some are former Sunni guerrillas (the White House makes it sound as if they are all friendly now); and some were until recently working closely with al-Qaeda.
Call it Afghanistan remix. Petraeus was a godsend; local Sunni tribal sheikhs could hardly believe their luck. They had found an eager counterinsurgency messiah with large pockets. Now they can't get enough of the United States' cash, weapons, spanking-new uniforms, body armor, helmets, pickup trucks, high-tech information.
They can patiently build their own Sunni militias and/or death squads with no hassle. They can take their time to settle ancient, ever-evolving tribal scores.
And sooner rather than later, they can turn on the occupiers themselves. All this financed with US taxpayers' money. Petraeus's counterinsurgency game - arming Sunnis and Shi'ites alike - is the ideal recipe for non-stop sectarian hatred, the perfect justification for an indefinite US presence in Iraq. Petraeus did not even bother to seek "permission" from the puppet Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad to arm Sunni militias who will try to depose this same government. There's also the extra bonus of the militias doing part of the dirty work for the Pentagon - going with a vengeance after Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Furthermore, it all fits the anti-Iran Pentagon hysteria - the creation of a Sunni counter-power to the Shi'ite Iran-trained Badr Organization. So the result is of this grand chaos strategy: Iraqis are plunged into horrific sectarian killings on behalf of clashing foreign powers, the US and Iran. Don't stop until you get enough Al-Qaeda for its part, with or without a fake, recycled video-only bin Laden, will keep enjoying the fruits of its brand recognition. Much more than the Middle East, al-Qaeda's special target audience is western Europe, where a legion of "white Moors" - second-generation, radicalized, born-again Muslims - eagerly accepts its new politico-religious anti-imperial message.
The best antidote to this expansion would be the dawn of real representative governments in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the Persian Gulf petro-monarchies. It won't happen - at least not in the near future. A new report released this week by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), one of the world's top think-tanks, is unmistakable.
As the IISS is very close to British intelligence, its conclusions represent a faithful portrait of how Western intelligence evaluates the al-Qaeda nebula. For the IISS, al-Qaeda - the network - is on a roll, is well established in northwestern Pakistan, is already able to pull off a new, improved September 11, and its ideological appeal "will require decades to eradicate". The IISS also notes how myriad "regional jihadi groups" - especially in the Maghreb (North Africa) and Iraq - have pledged a formal allegiance to al-Qaeda, but also support its global agenda. This may be the case with al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers.
Localized, regional or global, al-Qaeda the burning idea will keep surging on relentlessly - killing one US collaborator, Bush ally or - why not? - opportunistic sheikh at a time. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. (Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Some may call it divine providence, some may call it Allah's bidding; in the end it was up to real Iraq to intervene and shatter the "surge is a success" story sold to US and world public opinion by President George W Bush and his top man in Iraq, General David Petraeus. Only hours before Bush recommended to the nation and the world what he had told Petraeus to recommend to Congress - in
essence his roadmap toward counterinsurgency and endless military occupation of Iraq - a key player in the "success" story was killed, significantly right at the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha - along with his two bodyguards - was killed by a roadside bomb planted near his home in Ramadi, the capital of an Anbar province Petraeus had sworn was "pacified". Abu Risha, 37, was the leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, renamed Anbar Awakening - an alliance of about 200 Sunni sheikhs drawn mostly from the Dulaimi tribe and dozens of sub-clans who were fighting against al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers.
In his speech, Bush outlined the plan to leave more than 130,000 troops in the battle zone in Iraq next year, unless Petraeus and Bush decide further withdrawals are possible before that. With regard to Abu Risha's killing, as far as the White House is concerned it was the work of al-Qaeda (12 mentions of "al-Qaeda" in Bush's speech). Were this to be the case, the "don't mess with us" al-Qaeda message couldn't be more devastating. Consider the chain of events of the past few days.
In a carefully stage-managed piece of theater, Bush visits al-Asad military air base in Anbar (not real Iraq) to stress his "surge" is working. He personally meets Abu Risha.
Osama bin Laden, looking like a clone of himself with a stick-on beard, releases his first video in almost three years, proving he's alive and kicking. The video may or may be not be a fake.
Petraeus and US Ambassador in Iraq Ryan Crocker start their presentation in front of Congress, assuring the US and the world the "surge" is a "success".
Bin Laden releases his second tape in four days, praising one of the September 11, 2001, "martyrs". His image is on freeze-frame; his lips do not move.
Bush announces he will recommend to the nation what he told Petraeus to recommend to Congress: not a drawdown, but the actual extension of the "surge" until next summer.
Abu Risha, the man Petraeus relied on for the "success" of the "surge", is killed in Anbar.
No wonder Petraeus defined it as "a tragic loss". The hit on Bush's sheikh happened just 10 days after they met. Al-Qaeda had plenty of motives to order the hit. But so did other key players.
No Iraqi guerrilla or jihadist group claimed responsibility. Abu Risha was the most visible of the 200 or so sheikhs in Anbar Awakening. They were mostly from the Dulaimi tribe. Al-Qaeda has a close bond with the Mashadani tribe.
This could well have been an inter-tribal payback. Sheikh Jubeir Rashid, also part of the council, cryptically said that "such an attack was expected", but they "are determined to strike back". Abu Risha may have also been killed by one of the top Sunni Iraqi-nationalist guerrilla groups for which throwing the occupation out remains the top priority - way beyond fighting the Shi'ite-dominated government in the Green Zone or Shi'ite militias. Al-Qaeda may boast a maximum of 800 or so jihadis in Iraq.
The Sunni resistance has more than 100,000 fighters. The White House hurricane of spinning has simply erased the anti-occupation Sunni resistance masses from the ground. Marc Lynch, an expert on Arab media and Sunni politics at George Washington University in Washington, called remarks by Petraeus on Abu Risha's importance "a leap to judgment emblematic of all which is wrong with America's current views of the Sunnis of Iraq", Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service reported. "In reality, there are a plethora of likely suspects, reflecting the reality of an intensely factionalized and divided community which little resembles the picture offered by the administration's defenders," Lynch said. "Leaders of other tribes deeply resented Abu Risha's prominence.
Leaders of the major insurgency factions had for weeks been warning against allowing people such as Abu Risha to illegitimately reap the fruits of their jihad against the occupation," Lynch said. Petraeus' chaos strategy Anbar is not pacified, contrary to official line, and Petraeus's tactics once again are deceptive. When in late 2005 he was writing the new Pentagon counterinsurgency manual, he was heavy on "paramilitary units" and "specialized paramilitary strike forces". These are actually the new Petraeus-supported and armed actors in Anbar: hardcore Sunni militias. Some of their foot soldiers - receiving a handsome US$900 monthly salary in a land of 70% unemployment - are formerly unemployed "irregulars"; some are former Sunni guerrillas (the White House makes it sound as if they are all friendly now); and some were until recently working closely with al-Qaeda.
Call it Afghanistan remix. Petraeus was a godsend; local Sunni tribal sheikhs could hardly believe their luck. They had found an eager counterinsurgency messiah with large pockets. Now they can't get enough of the United States' cash, weapons, spanking-new uniforms, body armor, helmets, pickup trucks, high-tech information.
They can patiently build their own Sunni militias and/or death squads with no hassle. They can take their time to settle ancient, ever-evolving tribal scores.
And sooner rather than later, they can turn on the occupiers themselves. All this financed with US taxpayers' money. Petraeus's counterinsurgency game - arming Sunnis and Shi'ites alike - is the ideal recipe for non-stop sectarian hatred, the perfect justification for an indefinite US presence in Iraq. Petraeus did not even bother to seek "permission" from the puppet Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad to arm Sunni militias who will try to depose this same government. There's also the extra bonus of the militias doing part of the dirty work for the Pentagon - going with a vengeance after Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Furthermore, it all fits the anti-Iran Pentagon hysteria - the creation of a Sunni counter-power to the Shi'ite Iran-trained Badr Organization. So the result is of this grand chaos strategy: Iraqis are plunged into horrific sectarian killings on behalf of clashing foreign powers, the US and Iran. Don't stop until you get enough Al-Qaeda for its part, with or without a fake, recycled video-only bin Laden, will keep enjoying the fruits of its brand recognition. Much more than the Middle East, al-Qaeda's special target audience is western Europe, where a legion of "white Moors" - second-generation, radicalized, born-again Muslims - eagerly accepts its new politico-religious anti-imperial message.
The best antidote to this expansion would be the dawn of real representative governments in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the Persian Gulf petro-monarchies. It won't happen - at least not in the near future. A new report released this week by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), one of the world's top think-tanks, is unmistakable.
As the IISS is very close to British intelligence, its conclusions represent a faithful portrait of how Western intelligence evaluates the al-Qaeda nebula. For the IISS, al-Qaeda - the network - is on a roll, is well established in northwestern Pakistan, is already able to pull off a new, improved September 11, and its ideological appeal "will require decades to eradicate". The IISS also notes how myriad "regional jihadi groups" - especially in the Maghreb (North Africa) and Iraq - have pledged a formal allegiance to al-Qaeda, but also support its global agenda. This may be the case with al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers.
Localized, regional or global, al-Qaeda the burning idea will keep surging on relentlessly - killing one US collaborator, Bush ally or - why not? - opportunistic sheikh at a time. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. (Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The Assault on Petraeus
By Michael GersonWednesday, September 12, 2007; Page A19
There is a long American tradition of savaging failed generals, from George McClellan to William Westmoreland. It is a more novel tactic to attack a successful one. Sen. Dick Durbin accuses Gen. David Petraeus of "carefully manipulating the statistics." Sen. Harry Reid contends, "He's made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual." A newspaper ad by MoveOn.org includes the taunt: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" --
perhaps the first time since the third grade that this distinguished commander has been subjected to this level of wit.
Gen. Andrew Jackson probably would have responded to these reflections on his honor with a series of duels. Gen. Petraeus, in the manner of the modern Army, patiently answered with a series of facts and charts showing military progress in Iraq that seemed unimaginable even six months ago.
'There is a long American tradition of savaging failed generals. It is a more novel tactic to attack a successful one.','Michael Gerson') ;
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On Petraeus's brief watch, al-Qaeda in Iraq has suffered a major setback. It has been cleared out of the main population centers of Anbar province; its cells scattered into the countryside. The resentment of Sunni tribal leaders against al-Qaeda's highhanded brutality predated the surge -- but the surge gave those leaders the confidence and ability to oppose al-Qaeda. And this approach is showing promise among other Iraqi tribal groups as well.
In Baghdad, the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy -- a kind of community policing with very serious firepower -- has reduced sectarian murders significantly. Some militia activity has been pushed outside Baghdad or gone underground -- and this is also a victory of sorts, because order in Iraq's capital has great symbolic and practical importance.
But for opponents of the war, such progress is beside the point. Anything less than perfection in reaching a series of benchmarks is evidence of failure and reason for retreat. Former senator John Edwards, bobbing like a cork on every current of the left, calls for "No timeline, no funding. No excuses" -- a sudden cutoff of resources for American combat troops. Other critics recommend that American forces withdraw into a noncombat, supportive role, with a "small footprint," while unprepared Iraqis are pushed into the lead -- exactly the strategy that led to the escalation of violence in 2006.
These are not serious options. But the administration does face a serious question: Even if this military progress continues, how does it lead to the endgame of American withdrawal instead of Iraqi dependence? In spite of recent gains, civilian casualties remain high, sectarian groups are still deeply at odds, and the central government remains corrupt and ineffective.
Administration officials answer that they are seeing a promising, bottom-up change in Iraq -- something organic, not imposed or designed. Instead of national, political agreement, Iraq is experiencing local, tribal reconciliation. Even without a national oil law, oil revenue is being shared. Even in the absence of a de-Baathification law, tens of thousands of former Baathists are getting their pensions. Grass-roots progress, the argument goes, will eventually produce more responsible, pragmatic political leaders -- Sunnis who oppose al-Qaeda and Shiites who fight Iranian influence -- as well as more capable and professional Iraqi military forces. And this would allow America to provide the same level of security with fewer and fewer troops.
Petraeus's recommendation of troop reductions beginning in December, with a return to pre-surge troop levels by summer, is a down payment on this expectation.
But future reductions, he made clear, will be based on conditions in Iraq, not timelines. And those conditions are hard to predict.
At least three factors could complicate future withdrawals:
First, as the British leave, Basra and the south could descend into a chaos of battling militias -- threatening Iraqi oil fields and American supply lines. Would U.S. troops be forced to intervene?
Second, Iran may not tamely accept American progress in Iraq. Its government is already involved in the training and arming of proxies in Iraq. How would America need to respond if the Iranians escalate further and provide, for example, surface-to-air missiles to militias?
Third, even if Iranian-backed groups are isolated and undermined, the regular Shiite militias, often infiltrated into the police and Interior Ministry, are still forcing Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad. What needs to be done to stop them?
Despite real military progress, the situation in Iraq remains difficult. Gen. Petraeus is a skilled leader, but we do not know if even he can win. We know, however, one thing: If he is slandered, his advice is dismissed and Congress cuts off funding for the troops he commands, defeat in Iraq will be certain.
michaelgerson@cfr.org
There is a long American tradition of savaging failed generals, from George McClellan to William Westmoreland. It is a more novel tactic to attack a successful one. Sen. Dick Durbin accuses Gen. David Petraeus of "carefully manipulating the statistics." Sen. Harry Reid contends, "He's made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual." A newspaper ad by MoveOn.org includes the taunt: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" --
perhaps the first time since the third grade that this distinguished commander has been subjected to this level of wit.
Gen. Andrew Jackson probably would have responded to these reflections on his honor with a series of duels. Gen. Petraeus, in the manner of the modern Army, patiently answered with a series of facts and charts showing military progress in Iraq that seemed unimaginable even six months ago.
'There is a long American tradition of savaging failed generals. It is a more novel tactic to attack a successful one.','Michael Gerson') ;
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On Petraeus's brief watch, al-Qaeda in Iraq has suffered a major setback. It has been cleared out of the main population centers of Anbar province; its cells scattered into the countryside. The resentment of Sunni tribal leaders against al-Qaeda's highhanded brutality predated the surge -- but the surge gave those leaders the confidence and ability to oppose al-Qaeda. And this approach is showing promise among other Iraqi tribal groups as well.
In Baghdad, the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy -- a kind of community policing with very serious firepower -- has reduced sectarian murders significantly. Some militia activity has been pushed outside Baghdad or gone underground -- and this is also a victory of sorts, because order in Iraq's capital has great symbolic and practical importance.
But for opponents of the war, such progress is beside the point. Anything less than perfection in reaching a series of benchmarks is evidence of failure and reason for retreat. Former senator John Edwards, bobbing like a cork on every current of the left, calls for "No timeline, no funding. No excuses" -- a sudden cutoff of resources for American combat troops. Other critics recommend that American forces withdraw into a noncombat, supportive role, with a "small footprint," while unprepared Iraqis are pushed into the lead -- exactly the strategy that led to the escalation of violence in 2006.
These are not serious options. But the administration does face a serious question: Even if this military progress continues, how does it lead to the endgame of American withdrawal instead of Iraqi dependence? In spite of recent gains, civilian casualties remain high, sectarian groups are still deeply at odds, and the central government remains corrupt and ineffective.
Administration officials answer that they are seeing a promising, bottom-up change in Iraq -- something organic, not imposed or designed. Instead of national, political agreement, Iraq is experiencing local, tribal reconciliation. Even without a national oil law, oil revenue is being shared. Even in the absence of a de-Baathification law, tens of thousands of former Baathists are getting their pensions. Grass-roots progress, the argument goes, will eventually produce more responsible, pragmatic political leaders -- Sunnis who oppose al-Qaeda and Shiites who fight Iranian influence -- as well as more capable and professional Iraqi military forces. And this would allow America to provide the same level of security with fewer and fewer troops.
Petraeus's recommendation of troop reductions beginning in December, with a return to pre-surge troop levels by summer, is a down payment on this expectation.
But future reductions, he made clear, will be based on conditions in Iraq, not timelines. And those conditions are hard to predict.
At least three factors could complicate future withdrawals:
First, as the British leave, Basra and the south could descend into a chaos of battling militias -- threatening Iraqi oil fields and American supply lines. Would U.S. troops be forced to intervene?
Second, Iran may not tamely accept American progress in Iraq. Its government is already involved in the training and arming of proxies in Iraq. How would America need to respond if the Iranians escalate further and provide, for example, surface-to-air missiles to militias?
Third, even if Iranian-backed groups are isolated and undermined, the regular Shiite militias, often infiltrated into the police and Interior Ministry, are still forcing Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad. What needs to be done to stop them?
Despite real military progress, the situation in Iraq remains difficult. Gen. Petraeus is a skilled leader, but we do not know if even he can win. We know, however, one thing: If he is slandered, his advice is dismissed and Congress cuts off funding for the troops he commands, defeat in Iraq will be certain.
michaelgerson@cfr.org
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Remembering the Atrocities of 9/11 - 34 Years Ago
By NY Transfer 09/11/07 "ICH" --- - Some of us have been marking the atrocities of September 11 for 34 years. On September 11, 1973, Nixon, Kissinger and their pals at ITT went beyond "making the Chilean economy scream" and enjoyed a full-blown military assault against Chile which began the bloody fascist coup there. Here is a very brief history of that September 11 from Wikipedia, which offers extensive links to some other basic readings and chronologies. (See sources at the end). On September 11, 2003, people asked "Why Do they hate US?" The events of September 11, 1973 were just one good, ironic example. - NY Transfer *** Salvador Allende (1905-1973) died on September 11, 1973 The Democratically elected Socialist President of Chile (1970-1973) was overthrown and died during the US-backed Pinochet fascist coup when La Moneda Palace in Santiago was bombed by the Chilean military. Brief Wikipedia Summary On September 11, 1973, a military coup d'etat removed Allende. The intervention was extremely violent from the very beginning. The military surrounded La Moneda with tanks and infantry troops and bombed it with Hawker Hunter fighter jets. The president and some of his aides were besieged in the palace. Allende refused to surrender, and addressed the nation for a last time in a potent farewell speech (see below). The worst violence occurred in the first few months after the coup, with the number of suspected leftists killed or "disappeared" soon reaching into the thousands. In the days immediately following the coup, the National Stadium was used as a concentration camp holding 40,000 prisoners. Some of the most famous cases of "desaparecidos" are Charles Horman, a U.S. citizen who was tortured and killed during the coup itself; Chilean songwriter VÃctor Jara, murdered while held prisoner at the Chile Stadium immediately after the coup, and the October 1973 Caravan of Death (Caravana de la Muerte) where at least 70 persons were killed. Approximately 130,000 individuals were arrested in a three-year period, with the number of dead and "disappeared" reaching into the thousands within the first few months. Most of the people targeted had been supporters of Allende. *** Allende's Last Speech My friends, Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes. My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [paramilitary police]. Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history. Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges. I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition that was supported by professional associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours -- in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They were committed. History will judge them. Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country. The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either. Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers! These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason. Santiago de Chile, 11 September 1973
Source: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende%27s_Last_Speech
Source: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende%27s_Last_Speech
Monday, September 10, 2007
Will the Real Osama Stand Up?
By: Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
09/09/07 "ICH" -- -- It took a few minutes to sink in – the new tape of Osama Bin Laden that was shown and analyzed on MSNBC’s Keith Oberman show on Friday, September 7, 2007. Perhaps the most striking thing was his black beard. From all accounts, what sets OBL apart from others, even his most devout followers, is his devotion to Islam*. While Islam allows the trimming of the moustache, it calls for fully growing the beard in full. Henna, a known dye, is permissible in Islam as not only does it have medicinal qualities, but it may be used to enhance beauty – in women. How likely is it that OBL who is a strict adherent of fundamental Islam, would dye his beard and trim it to appear in front of a camera in order to meet the expectations of the ‘Western terrorist specialists’?
What was said was even more suspicious. OBL was said to have been surprised that the democrats were not able to bring the troops home. The intended message by ‘OBL’ was that Democrats may have House majority, but they are as impotent as they have always been and clearly the Cheney/Bush team are the emperors running the world.
I was even more shocked to hear him endorse books by two American authors, one of them being Noam Chomsky’s “American Imperialism”. Here my head started spinning. It was far graver than Mr. Bush addressing the APEC audience OPEC. American Imperialism was authored by non other than Michael Scheuer, a superhawk who was the top CIA agent for years tracking OBL. Chomsky wrote “Hegemony or Survival; America’s Quest for Global Dominance” 2004. oops – Is the word ‘intelligence’ an oxymoron in this country or what?
Given the benefit of the doubt, or lost in translation, I have to wonder how ‘OBL’ being on the run and being pursued by the world’s greatest military, the only superpower, and while hiding in a cave with a bounty of $50m on his head, got the book in the first place? Perhaps if we followed DHL to some place in Bora Bora, we may catch him dying his beard while reading Chomsky. My guess is that this was a smear campaign to connect Chomsky to al-Qaeda. Here is a brilliant intellectual who speaks to the truth and spills the beans on American foreign policy, what better way to destroy his reputation than to have America’s number one enemy, the leader of al-Qaeda, endorse his work?
And finally, there is the fear factor. As a judge slams down parts of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional, it would seem that Mr. Bush has found a way to remind the American public that they should remain petrified. Nothing intimidates a nation better than fear, not even ignorance. Mr. Bush said the message was "a reminder of the dangerous world in which we live". CIA director Michael Hayden, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Friday, warned that al-Qaeda was plotting new attacks on the US. "Our analysts assess with high confidence that al-Qaeda's central leadership is planning high impact plots against the American homeland," he said. “[i]
Fear will allow more liberties to be taken away. Not only will there be justification for the troops to remain in Iraq, as planned, but there will be justification for another war – Iran. The options are in the air – the nuclear armed B-52 bombers, all that is needed is a panicked populace. There was never a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. With persistent lies, this White House committed genocide in Iraq. With the same lies, they are planning genocide next door.
* Osama Bin Laden framed his anti-US arguments in the language of Islam, but what he was, and continues to voice, is anti-colonist sentiments. The banner of Islam broke the geographical boundaries to fight and imperial power that had sprawled all over the Moslem world.
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has lived and studied in Iran, the UK, France, and the US. She obtained her Bachelors Degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is currently pursuing her education in Middle East studies and Public Diplomacy. Soraya has done extensive research on US foreign policy towards Iran and Iran’s nuclear program. She can be reached at sorayau@earthlink.net
09/09/07 "ICH" -- -- It took a few minutes to sink in – the new tape of Osama Bin Laden that was shown and analyzed on MSNBC’s Keith Oberman show on Friday, September 7, 2007. Perhaps the most striking thing was his black beard. From all accounts, what sets OBL apart from others, even his most devout followers, is his devotion to Islam*. While Islam allows the trimming of the moustache, it calls for fully growing the beard in full. Henna, a known dye, is permissible in Islam as not only does it have medicinal qualities, but it may be used to enhance beauty – in women. How likely is it that OBL who is a strict adherent of fundamental Islam, would dye his beard and trim it to appear in front of a camera in order to meet the expectations of the ‘Western terrorist specialists’?
What was said was even more suspicious. OBL was said to have been surprised that the democrats were not able to bring the troops home. The intended message by ‘OBL’ was that Democrats may have House majority, but they are as impotent as they have always been and clearly the Cheney/Bush team are the emperors running the world.
I was even more shocked to hear him endorse books by two American authors, one of them being Noam Chomsky’s “American Imperialism”. Here my head started spinning. It was far graver than Mr. Bush addressing the APEC audience OPEC. American Imperialism was authored by non other than Michael Scheuer, a superhawk who was the top CIA agent for years tracking OBL. Chomsky wrote “Hegemony or Survival; America’s Quest for Global Dominance” 2004. oops – Is the word ‘intelligence’ an oxymoron in this country or what?
Given the benefit of the doubt, or lost in translation, I have to wonder how ‘OBL’ being on the run and being pursued by the world’s greatest military, the only superpower, and while hiding in a cave with a bounty of $50m on his head, got the book in the first place? Perhaps if we followed DHL to some place in Bora Bora, we may catch him dying his beard while reading Chomsky. My guess is that this was a smear campaign to connect Chomsky to al-Qaeda. Here is a brilliant intellectual who speaks to the truth and spills the beans on American foreign policy, what better way to destroy his reputation than to have America’s number one enemy, the leader of al-Qaeda, endorse his work?
And finally, there is the fear factor. As a judge slams down parts of the Patriot Act as unconstitutional, it would seem that Mr. Bush has found a way to remind the American public that they should remain petrified. Nothing intimidates a nation better than fear, not even ignorance. Mr. Bush said the message was "a reminder of the dangerous world in which we live". CIA director Michael Hayden, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Friday, warned that al-Qaeda was plotting new attacks on the US. "Our analysts assess with high confidence that al-Qaeda's central leadership is planning high impact plots against the American homeland," he said. “[i]
Fear will allow more liberties to be taken away. Not only will there be justification for the troops to remain in Iraq, as planned, but there will be justification for another war – Iran. The options are in the air – the nuclear armed B-52 bombers, all that is needed is a panicked populace. There was never a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. With persistent lies, this White House committed genocide in Iraq. With the same lies, they are planning genocide next door.
* Osama Bin Laden framed his anti-US arguments in the language of Islam, but what he was, and continues to voice, is anti-colonist sentiments. The banner of Islam broke the geographical boundaries to fight and imperial power that had sprawled all over the Moslem world.
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has lived and studied in Iran, the UK, France, and the US. She obtained her Bachelors Degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is currently pursuing her education in Middle East studies and Public Diplomacy. Soraya has done extensive research on US foreign policy towards Iran and Iran’s nuclear program. She can be reached at sorayau@earthlink.net
The Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq
Fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is the last big argument for keeping U.S. troops in the country. But the military's estimation of the threat is alarmingly wrong.By Andrew Tilghman
09/09/07 "Washington Monthly" -- --- In March 2007, a pair of truck bombs tore through the Shiite marketplace in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, killing more than 150 people. The blast reduced the ancient city center to rubble, leaving body parts and charred vegetables scattered amid pools of blood. It was among the most lethal attacks to date in the five-year-old Iraq War. Within hours, Iraqi officials in Baghdad had pinned the bombing on al-Qaeda, and news reports from Reuters, the BBC, MSNBC, and others carried those remarks around the world. An Internet posting by the terrorist group known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) took credit for the destruction. Within a few days, U.S. Army General David Petraeus publicly blamed AQI for the carnage, accusing the group of trying to foment sectarian violence and ignite a civil war. Back in Washington, pundits latched on to the attack with special interest, as President Bush had previously touted a period of calm in Tal Afar as evidence that the military's retooled counterinsurgency doctrine was working. For days, reporters and bloggers debated whether the attacks signaled a "resurgence" of al-Qaeda in the city.
Yet there's reason to doubt that AQI had any role in the bombing. In the weeks before the attack, sectarian tensions had been simmering after a local Sunni woman told Al Jazeera television that she had been gang-raped by a group of Shiite Iraqi army soldiers. Multiple insurgent groups called for violence to avenge the woman's honor. Immediately after the blast, some in uniform expressed doubts about al- Qaeda's alleged role and suggested that homegrown sectarian strife was more likely at work. "It's really not al-Qaeda who has infiltrated so much as the fact [of] what happened in 2003," said Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the Naval War College who served as an Army political adviser to the 3rd Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar until shortly before the bombing. "The formerly dominant Sunni Turkmen majority there," he told PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer soon after the bombing, "suddenly ... felt themselves having been thrown out of power. And this is essentially their revenge."
A week later, Iraqi security forces raided a home outside Tal Afar andarrested two men suspected of orchestrating the bombing. Yet when the U.S. military issued a press release about the arrests, there was no mention of an al-Qaeda connection. The suspects were never formally charged, and nearly six months later neither the U.S. military nor Iraqi police are certain of the source of the attacks. In recent public statements, the military has backed off its former allegations that al-Qaeda was responsible, instead asserting, as Lieutenant Colonel Michael Donnelly wrote in response to an inquiry from the Washington Monthly, that "the tactics used in this attack are consistent with al-Qaeda."
This scenario has become common. After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq. (In July, for instance, at Charleston Air Force Base, the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times.)
By now, many in Washington have learned to discount the president's rhetorical excesses when it comes to the war. But even some of his harshest critics take at face value the estimates provided by the military about AQI's presence. Politicians of both parties point to such figures when forming their positions on the war. All of the top three Democratic presidential candidates have argued for keeping some American forces in Iraq or the region, citing among other reasons the continued threat from al-Qaeda.
But what if official military estimates about the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq are simply wrong? Indeed, interviews with numerous military and intelligence analysts, both inside and outside of government, suggest that the number of strikes the group has directed represent only a fraction of what official estimates claim. Further, al-Qaeda's presumed role in leading the violence through uniquely devastating attacks that catalyze further unrest may also be overstated.
Having been led astray by flawed prewar intelligence about WMDs, official Washington wants to believe it takes a more skeptical view of the administration's information now. Yet Beltway insiders seem to be making almost precisely the same mistakes in sizing up al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Despite President Bush's near-singular focus on al-Qaeda in Iraq, most in Washington understand that instability on the ground stems from multiple sources. Numerous attacks on both U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians have been the handiwork of Shiite militants, often connected to, or even part of, the Iraqi government. Opportunistic criminal gangs engage in some of the same heinous tactics.
The Sunni resistance is also comprised of multiple groups. The first consists of so-called "former regime elements." These include thousands of ex-officers from Saddam's old intelligence agency, the Mukabarat, and from the elite paramilitary unit Saddam Fedayeen. Their primary goal is to drive out the U.S. occupation and install a Sunni-led government hostile to Iranian influence. Some within this broad group support reconciliation with the current government or negotiations with the United States, under the condition that American forces set a timetable for a troop withdrawal.
The second category consists of homegrown Iraqi Sunni religious groups, such as the Mujahadeen Army of Iraq. These are native Iraqis who aim to install a religious-based government in Baghdad, similar to the regime in Tehran. These groups use religious rhetoric and terrorist tactics but are essentially nationalistic in their aims.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq comprises the third group. The terrorist network was founded in 2003 by the now-dead Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (The extent of the group's organizational ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda is hotly debated, but the organizations share a worldview and set of objectives.) AQI is believed to have the most non-Iraqis in its ranks, particularly among its leadership. However, most recent assessments say the rank and file are mostly radicalized Iraqis. AQI, which calls itself the "Islamic State of Iraq," espouses the most radical form of Islam and calls for the imposition of strict sharia, or Islamic law. The group has no plans for a future Iraqi government and instead hopes to create a new Islamic caliphate with borders reaching far beyond Mesopotamia.
The essential questions are: How large is the presence of AQI, in terms of manpower and attacks instigated, and what role does the group play in catalyzing further violence? For the first question, the military has produced an estimate. In a background briefing this July in Baghdad, military officials said that during the first half of this year AQI accounted for 15 percent of attacks in Iraq. That figure was also cited in the military intelligence report during final preparations for a National Intelligence Estimate in July.
This is the number on which many military experts inside the Beltway rely. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution who attended the Baghdad background briefing, explained that he thought the estimate derived from a comprehensive analysis by teams of local intelligence agents who examine the type and location of daily attacks, and their intended targets, and crosscheck that with reports from Iraqi informants and other data, such as intercepted phone calls. "It's a fairly detailed kind of assessment," O'Hanlon said. "Obviously you can't always know who is behind an attack, but there is a fairly systematic way of looking at the attacks where they can begin to make a pretty informed guess."
Yet those who have worked on estimates inside the system take a more circumspect view. Alex Rossmiller, who worked in Iraq as an intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, says that real uncertainties exist in assigning responsibility for attacks. "It was kind of a running joke in our office," he recalls. "We would sarcastically refer to everybody as al-Qaeda."
To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."
It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics.
The first instructive set of data comes from the U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In March, the organization analyzed the online postings of eleven prominent Sunni insurgent groups, including AQI, tallying how many attacks each group claimed. AQI took credit for 10 percent of attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias (forty-three out of 439 attacks), and less than 4 percent of attacks on U.S. troops (seventeen out of 357). Although these Internet postings should not be taken as proof positive of the culprits, it's instructive to remember that PR-conscious al- Qaeda operatives are far more likely to overstate than understate their role.
When turning to the question of manpower, military officials told the New York Times in August that of the roughly 24,500 prisoners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (nearly all of whom are Sunni), just 1,800—about 7 percent—claim allegiance to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, the composition of inmates does not support the assumption that large numbers of foreign terrorists, long believed to be the leaders and most hard-core elements of AQI, are operating inside Iraq. In August, American forces held in custody 280 foreign nationals—slightly more than 1 percent of total inmates.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence's much larger estimates of the insurgency—200,000 fighters—INR's estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. This year, the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, "the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number."
How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."
So how did the military come up with an estimate of 15 percent, when government data and many of the intelligence community's own analysts point to estimates a fraction of that size? The problem begins at the top. When the White House singles out al-Qaeda in Iraq for special attention, the bureaucracy responds by creating procedures that hunt down more evidence of the organization. The more manpower assigned to focus on the group, the more evidence is uncovered that points to it lurking in every shadow. "When you have something that is really hot, the leaders start tasking everyone to look into that," explains W. Patrick Lang, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former head of Middle East intelligence analysis for the Department of Defense. "Whoever is at the top of the pyramid says, 'Make me a briefing showing what al-Qaeda in Iraq is doing,' and then the decision maker says, 'Aha, I knew I was right.'"
With disproportionate resources dedicated to tracking AQI, the search has become a self-reinforcing loop. The Army has a Special Operations task force solely dedicated to tracking al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Defense Intelligence Agency tracks AQI through its Iraq office and its counterterrorism office. The result is more information culled, more PowerPoint slides created, and, ultimately, more attention drawn to AQI, which amplifies its significance in the minds of military and intelligence officers. "Once people look at everything through that lens, al-Qaeda is all they see," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who also worked at the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. "It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Ground-level analysts in the field, facing pressures from superiors to document AQI's handiwork, might be able to question such assumptions if they had strong intelligence networks on the ground. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case. The intelligence community's efforts are hobbled by too few Arabic speakers in their ranks and too many unreliable informants in Iraqi communities, rendering a hazy picture that is open to interpretations.
Because uncertainty exists, the bar for labeling an attack the work of al-Qaeda can be very low. The fact that a detainee possesses al-Qaeda pamphlets or a laptop computer with cached jihadist Web sites, for example, is at times enough for analysts to link a detainee to al-Qaeda. "Sometimes it's as simple as an anonymous tip that al-Qaeda is active in a certain village, so they will go out on an operation and whoever they roll up, we call them al-Qaeda," says Alex Rossmiller. "People can get labeled al-Qaeda anywhere along in the chain of events, and it's really hard to unlabel them." Even when the military backs off explicit statements that AQI is responsible, as with the Tal Afar truck bombings, the perception that an attack is the work of al-Qaeda is rarely corrected.
The result can be baffling for the troops working on the ground, who hear the leadership characterizing the conflict in Iraq in ways that do not necessarily match what they see in the dusty and danger-laden villages. Michael Zacchea, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves who was deployed to Iraq, said he was sometimes skeptical of upper-level analysis emphasizing al-Qaeda in Iraq rather than the insurgency's local roots. "It's very, very frustrating for everyone involved who is trying to do the right thing," he said. "That's not how anyone learned to play the game when we were officers coming up the ranks, and we were taught to provide clear battlefield analysis."
Even if the manpower and number of attacks attributed to AQI have been exaggerated—and they have—many observers maintain that what is uniquely dangerous about the group is not its numbers, but the spectacular nature of its strikes. While homegrown Sunni and Shiite militias engage for the most part in tit-for-tat violence to forward sectarian ends, AQI's methods are presumed to be different—more dramatic, more inflammatory, and having a greater ripple effect on the country's fragile political environment. "The effect of al-Qaeda has been far beyond the numbers that they field," explains Thomas Donnelly, resident fellow for defense and national security at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "The question is, What attacks are likely to have the most destabilizing political and strategic affects?" He points, as do many inside the administration, to the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara, a revered Shiite shrine, as a paramount example of AQI's outsize influence. President Bush has laid unqualified blame for the Samara bombing on al-Qaeda, and described the infamous incident—and ensuing sectarian violence—as a fatal tipping point toward the current unrest.
But is this view of AQI's vanguard role in destabilizing Iraq really true? There are three reasons to question that belief.
First, although spectacular attacks were a distinctive AQI hallmark early in the war, the group has since lost its monopoly on bloody fireworks. After five years of shifting alliances, cross-pollination of tactics, and copycat attacks, other insurgent groups now launch equally dramatic and politically charged attacks. For example, a second explosion at the Samara mosque in June 2007, which destroyed the shrine's minarets and sparked a wave of revenge attacks on Sunni mosques nationwide, may have been an inside job. U.S. military officials said fifteen uniformed men from the Shiite-run Iraqi Security Forces were arrested for suspected involvement in the attack.
Second, it remains unclear whether the original Samara bombing was itself the work of AQI. The group never took credit for the attack, as it has many other high-profile incidents. The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein. (His right-hand man, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, was also a former military intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army.) Key features of the bombing did not conform to the profile of an AQI attack. For example, the bombers did not target civilians, or even kill the Shiite Iraqi army soldiers guarding the mosque, both of which are trademark tactics of AQI. The planners also employed sophisticated explosive devices, suggesting formal military training common among former regime officers, rather than the more bluntly destructive tactics typical of AQI. Finally, Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency. Frank "Greg" Ford, a retired counterintelligence agent for the Army Reserves, who worked with the Army in Samara before the 2006 bombing, says that the evidence points away from AQI and toward a different conclusion: "The Baathists directed that attack," says Ford.
Third, while some analysts believe that AQI drafts Baathist insurgents to carry out its attacks, other intelligence experts think it is the other way around. In other words, they see evidence of native insurgent forces coopting the steady stream of delusional extremists seeking martyrdom that AQI brings into Iraq. "Al-Qaeda can't operate anywhere in Iraq without kissing the ring of the former regime," says Nance. "They can't move car bombs full of explosives and foreign suicide bombers through a city without everyone knowing who they are. They need to be facilitated." Thus new foreign fighters "come through and some local Iraqis will say, 'Okay, why don't you go down to the Ministry of Defense building downtown.'" AQI recruits often find themselves taking orders from a network of former regime insurgents, who assemble their car bombs and tell them what to blow up. They become, as Nance says, "puppets for the other insurgent groups."
The view that AQI is neither as big nor as lethal as commonly believed is widespread among working-level analysts and troops on the ground. A majority of those interviewed for this article believe that the military's AQI estimates are overblown to varying degrees. If such misgivings are common, why haven't doubts pricked the public debate? The reason is that alternate views are running up against an echo chamber of powerful players all with an interest in hyping AQI's role.
The first group that profits from an outsize focus on AQI are former regime elements, and the tribal chiefs with whom they are often allied. These forces are able to carry out attacks against Shiites and Americans, but also to shift the blame if it suits their purposes. While the U.S. military has recently touted "news" that Sunni insurgents have turned against the al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar Province, there is little evidence of actual clashes between these two groups. Sunni insurgents in Anbar have largely ceased attacks on Americans, but some observers suggest that this development has less to do with vanquishing AQI than with the fact that U.S. troops now routinely deliver cash-filled duffle bags to tribal sheiks serving as "lead contractors" on "reconstruction projects." The excuse of fighting AQI comes in handy. "Remember, Iraq is an honor society," explains Juan Cole, an Iraq expert and professor of modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. "But if you say it wasn't us—it was al-Qaeda—then you don't lose face."
The second benefactor is the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, often the first to blame specific attacks on AQI. Talking about "al-Qaeda" offers the government a politically correct way of talking about Sunni violence without seeming to blame the Sunnis themselves, to whom they are ostensibly trying to reach out in a unity government. On a deeper level, however, the al-Maliki regime has very limited popular support, and the government officials and ruling Islamic Dawa Party feel an imperative to include Iraqi troubles in the broader "global war in terrorism" in order to keep U.S. troops in the country. In June, when faced with increasingly uncomfortable pressure from the Americans for his failure to resolve key political issues, al-Maliki warned that Iraqi intelligence had found evidence of a "widespread and dangerous plan by the terrorist al-Qaeda organization" to mount attacks outside of Iraq.
Elsewhere within the Shiite bloc of Iraqi politics, Moqtada al-Sadr has his own reasons for playing up the idea of AQI. "The Sadrists want to overstate the role of al-Qaeda in a way to emphasize on the 'foreignness' of the current problem in Iraq; and this easily fits their anti-occupation ideology, which seems to gain more popularity among Shia Iraqis on a daily basis," said Babak Rahimi, a professor of Islamic Studies and expert in Shiite politics at the University of California at San Diego.
Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain eager to take credit for the violence in Iraq, despite the bad blood that existed between bin Laden and AQI's slain founder, al-Zarqawi. They've produced a long series of taped statements in recent years taunting U.S. leaders and attempting to conflate their operations with the Sunni resistance in Iraq. "They want to bring this all together as a motivating tool to encourage recruitment," said Farhana Ali, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.
The press has also been complicit in inflating the threat of AQI. Because of the danger on the ground, reporters struggle to do the kind of comprehensive field reporting that's necessary to check facts and question statements from military spokespersons and Iraqi politicians. Today, for example, U.S. reporters rarely travel independently outside central Baghdad. Few, if any, insurgents have ever given interviews to Western reporters. These limitations are understandable, if unfortunate. But news organizations are reluctant to admit their confines in obtaining information. Ambiguities are glossed over; allegations are presented as facts. Besides, it's undeniably in the reporter's own interest to keep "al- Qaeda attacks" in the headline, because it may move their story from A16 to A1.
Finally, no one has more incentive to overstate the threat of AQI than President Bush and those in the administration who argue for keeping a substantial military presence in Iraq. Insistent talk about AQI aims to place the Iraq War in the context of the broader war on terrorism. Pointing to al- Qaeda in Iraq helps the administration leverage Americans' fears about terrorism and residual anger over the attacks of September 11. It is perhaps one of the last rhetorical crutches the president has left to lean on.
This is not to say that al-Qaeda in Iraq doesn't pose a real danger, both to stability in Iraq and to security in the United States. Today multiple Iraqi insurgent groups target U.S. forces, with the aim of driving out the occupation. But once our troops withdraw, most Sunni resistance fighters will have no impetus to launch strikes on American soil. In that regard, al-Qaeda—and AQI, to the extent it is affiliated with bin Laden's network—is unique. The group's leadership consists largely of foreign fighters, and its ideology and ambitions are global. Al-Qaeda fighters trained in Baghdad may one day use those skills to plot strikes aimed at Boston.
Yet it's not clear that the best way to counter this threat is with military action in Iraq. AQI's presence is tolerated by the country's Sunni Arabs, historically among the most secular in the Middle East, because they have a common enemy in the United States. Absent this shared cause, it's not clear that native insurgents would still welcome AQI forces working to impose strict sharia. In Baghdad, any near-term functioning government will likely be an alliance of Shiites and Kurds, two groups unlikely to accept organized radical Sunni Arab militants within their borders. Yet while precisely predicting future political dynamics in Iraq is uncertain, one thing is clear now: the continued American occupation of Iraq is al-Qaeda's best recruitment tool, the lure to hook new recruits. As RAND's Ali said, "What inspires jihadis today is Iraq."
Five years ago, the American public was asked to support the invasion of Iraq based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to al-Qaeda. Today, the erroneous belief that al-Qaeda's franchise in Iraq is a driving force behind the chaos in that country may be setting us up for a similar mistake.
Andrew Tilghman was an Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper in 2005 and 2006. He can be reached at tilghman.andrew@gmail.com.
09/09/07 "Washington Monthly" -- --- In March 2007, a pair of truck bombs tore through the Shiite marketplace in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, killing more than 150 people. The blast reduced the ancient city center to rubble, leaving body parts and charred vegetables scattered amid pools of blood. It was among the most lethal attacks to date in the five-year-old Iraq War. Within hours, Iraqi officials in Baghdad had pinned the bombing on al-Qaeda, and news reports from Reuters, the BBC, MSNBC, and others carried those remarks around the world. An Internet posting by the terrorist group known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) took credit for the destruction. Within a few days, U.S. Army General David Petraeus publicly blamed AQI for the carnage, accusing the group of trying to foment sectarian violence and ignite a civil war. Back in Washington, pundits latched on to the attack with special interest, as President Bush had previously touted a period of calm in Tal Afar as evidence that the military's retooled counterinsurgency doctrine was working. For days, reporters and bloggers debated whether the attacks signaled a "resurgence" of al-Qaeda in the city.
Yet there's reason to doubt that AQI had any role in the bombing. In the weeks before the attack, sectarian tensions had been simmering after a local Sunni woman told Al Jazeera television that she had been gang-raped by a group of Shiite Iraqi army soldiers. Multiple insurgent groups called for violence to avenge the woman's honor. Immediately after the blast, some in uniform expressed doubts about al- Qaeda's alleged role and suggested that homegrown sectarian strife was more likely at work. "It's really not al-Qaeda who has infiltrated so much as the fact [of] what happened in 2003," said Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the Naval War College who served as an Army political adviser to the 3rd Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar until shortly before the bombing. "The formerly dominant Sunni Turkmen majority there," he told PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer soon after the bombing, "suddenly ... felt themselves having been thrown out of power. And this is essentially their revenge."
A week later, Iraqi security forces raided a home outside Tal Afar andarrested two men suspected of orchestrating the bombing. Yet when the U.S. military issued a press release about the arrests, there was no mention of an al-Qaeda connection. The suspects were never formally charged, and nearly six months later neither the U.S. military nor Iraqi police are certain of the source of the attacks. In recent public statements, the military has backed off its former allegations that al-Qaeda was responsible, instead asserting, as Lieutenant Colonel Michael Donnelly wrote in response to an inquiry from the Washington Monthly, that "the tactics used in this attack are consistent with al-Qaeda."
This scenario has become common. After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq. (In July, for instance, at Charleston Air Force Base, the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times.)
By now, many in Washington have learned to discount the president's rhetorical excesses when it comes to the war. But even some of his harshest critics take at face value the estimates provided by the military about AQI's presence. Politicians of both parties point to such figures when forming their positions on the war. All of the top three Democratic presidential candidates have argued for keeping some American forces in Iraq or the region, citing among other reasons the continued threat from al-Qaeda.
But what if official military estimates about the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq are simply wrong? Indeed, interviews with numerous military and intelligence analysts, both inside and outside of government, suggest that the number of strikes the group has directed represent only a fraction of what official estimates claim. Further, al-Qaeda's presumed role in leading the violence through uniquely devastating attacks that catalyze further unrest may also be overstated.
Having been led astray by flawed prewar intelligence about WMDs, official Washington wants to believe it takes a more skeptical view of the administration's information now. Yet Beltway insiders seem to be making almost precisely the same mistakes in sizing up al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Despite President Bush's near-singular focus on al-Qaeda in Iraq, most in Washington understand that instability on the ground stems from multiple sources. Numerous attacks on both U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians have been the handiwork of Shiite militants, often connected to, or even part of, the Iraqi government. Opportunistic criminal gangs engage in some of the same heinous tactics.
The Sunni resistance is also comprised of multiple groups. The first consists of so-called "former regime elements." These include thousands of ex-officers from Saddam's old intelligence agency, the Mukabarat, and from the elite paramilitary unit Saddam Fedayeen. Their primary goal is to drive out the U.S. occupation and install a Sunni-led government hostile to Iranian influence. Some within this broad group support reconciliation with the current government or negotiations with the United States, under the condition that American forces set a timetable for a troop withdrawal.
The second category consists of homegrown Iraqi Sunni religious groups, such as the Mujahadeen Army of Iraq. These are native Iraqis who aim to install a religious-based government in Baghdad, similar to the regime in Tehran. These groups use religious rhetoric and terrorist tactics but are essentially nationalistic in their aims.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq comprises the third group. The terrorist network was founded in 2003 by the now-dead Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (The extent of the group's organizational ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda is hotly debated, but the organizations share a worldview and set of objectives.) AQI is believed to have the most non-Iraqis in its ranks, particularly among its leadership. However, most recent assessments say the rank and file are mostly radicalized Iraqis. AQI, which calls itself the "Islamic State of Iraq," espouses the most radical form of Islam and calls for the imposition of strict sharia, or Islamic law. The group has no plans for a future Iraqi government and instead hopes to create a new Islamic caliphate with borders reaching far beyond Mesopotamia.
The essential questions are: How large is the presence of AQI, in terms of manpower and attacks instigated, and what role does the group play in catalyzing further violence? For the first question, the military has produced an estimate. In a background briefing this July in Baghdad, military officials said that during the first half of this year AQI accounted for 15 percent of attacks in Iraq. That figure was also cited in the military intelligence report during final preparations for a National Intelligence Estimate in July.
This is the number on which many military experts inside the Beltway rely. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution who attended the Baghdad background briefing, explained that he thought the estimate derived from a comprehensive analysis by teams of local intelligence agents who examine the type and location of daily attacks, and their intended targets, and crosscheck that with reports from Iraqi informants and other data, such as intercepted phone calls. "It's a fairly detailed kind of assessment," O'Hanlon said. "Obviously you can't always know who is behind an attack, but there is a fairly systematic way of looking at the attacks where they can begin to make a pretty informed guess."
Yet those who have worked on estimates inside the system take a more circumspect view. Alex Rossmiller, who worked in Iraq as an intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, says that real uncertainties exist in assigning responsibility for attacks. "It was kind of a running joke in our office," he recalls. "We would sarcastically refer to everybody as al-Qaeda."
To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."
It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics.
The first instructive set of data comes from the U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In March, the organization analyzed the online postings of eleven prominent Sunni insurgent groups, including AQI, tallying how many attacks each group claimed. AQI took credit for 10 percent of attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias (forty-three out of 439 attacks), and less than 4 percent of attacks on U.S. troops (seventeen out of 357). Although these Internet postings should not be taken as proof positive of the culprits, it's instructive to remember that PR-conscious al- Qaeda operatives are far more likely to overstate than understate their role.
When turning to the question of manpower, military officials told the New York Times in August that of the roughly 24,500 prisoners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (nearly all of whom are Sunni), just 1,800—about 7 percent—claim allegiance to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, the composition of inmates does not support the assumption that large numbers of foreign terrorists, long believed to be the leaders and most hard-core elements of AQI, are operating inside Iraq. In August, American forces held in custody 280 foreign nationals—slightly more than 1 percent of total inmates.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence's much larger estimates of the insurgency—200,000 fighters—INR's estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. This year, the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, "the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number."
How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."
So how did the military come up with an estimate of 15 percent, when government data and many of the intelligence community's own analysts point to estimates a fraction of that size? The problem begins at the top. When the White House singles out al-Qaeda in Iraq for special attention, the bureaucracy responds by creating procedures that hunt down more evidence of the organization. The more manpower assigned to focus on the group, the more evidence is uncovered that points to it lurking in every shadow. "When you have something that is really hot, the leaders start tasking everyone to look into that," explains W. Patrick Lang, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former head of Middle East intelligence analysis for the Department of Defense. "Whoever is at the top of the pyramid says, 'Make me a briefing showing what al-Qaeda in Iraq is doing,' and then the decision maker says, 'Aha, I knew I was right.'"
With disproportionate resources dedicated to tracking AQI, the search has become a self-reinforcing loop. The Army has a Special Operations task force solely dedicated to tracking al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Defense Intelligence Agency tracks AQI through its Iraq office and its counterterrorism office. The result is more information culled, more PowerPoint slides created, and, ultimately, more attention drawn to AQI, which amplifies its significance in the minds of military and intelligence officers. "Once people look at everything through that lens, al-Qaeda is all they see," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who also worked at the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. "It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Ground-level analysts in the field, facing pressures from superiors to document AQI's handiwork, might be able to question such assumptions if they had strong intelligence networks on the ground. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case. The intelligence community's efforts are hobbled by too few Arabic speakers in their ranks and too many unreliable informants in Iraqi communities, rendering a hazy picture that is open to interpretations.
Because uncertainty exists, the bar for labeling an attack the work of al-Qaeda can be very low. The fact that a detainee possesses al-Qaeda pamphlets or a laptop computer with cached jihadist Web sites, for example, is at times enough for analysts to link a detainee to al-Qaeda. "Sometimes it's as simple as an anonymous tip that al-Qaeda is active in a certain village, so they will go out on an operation and whoever they roll up, we call them al-Qaeda," says Alex Rossmiller. "People can get labeled al-Qaeda anywhere along in the chain of events, and it's really hard to unlabel them." Even when the military backs off explicit statements that AQI is responsible, as with the Tal Afar truck bombings, the perception that an attack is the work of al-Qaeda is rarely corrected.
The result can be baffling for the troops working on the ground, who hear the leadership characterizing the conflict in Iraq in ways that do not necessarily match what they see in the dusty and danger-laden villages. Michael Zacchea, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves who was deployed to Iraq, said he was sometimes skeptical of upper-level analysis emphasizing al-Qaeda in Iraq rather than the insurgency's local roots. "It's very, very frustrating for everyone involved who is trying to do the right thing," he said. "That's not how anyone learned to play the game when we were officers coming up the ranks, and we were taught to provide clear battlefield analysis."
Even if the manpower and number of attacks attributed to AQI have been exaggerated—and they have—many observers maintain that what is uniquely dangerous about the group is not its numbers, but the spectacular nature of its strikes. While homegrown Sunni and Shiite militias engage for the most part in tit-for-tat violence to forward sectarian ends, AQI's methods are presumed to be different—more dramatic, more inflammatory, and having a greater ripple effect on the country's fragile political environment. "The effect of al-Qaeda has been far beyond the numbers that they field," explains Thomas Donnelly, resident fellow for defense and national security at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "The question is, What attacks are likely to have the most destabilizing political and strategic affects?" He points, as do many inside the administration, to the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara, a revered Shiite shrine, as a paramount example of AQI's outsize influence. President Bush has laid unqualified blame for the Samara bombing on al-Qaeda, and described the infamous incident—and ensuing sectarian violence—as a fatal tipping point toward the current unrest.
But is this view of AQI's vanguard role in destabilizing Iraq really true? There are three reasons to question that belief.
First, although spectacular attacks were a distinctive AQI hallmark early in the war, the group has since lost its monopoly on bloody fireworks. After five years of shifting alliances, cross-pollination of tactics, and copycat attacks, other insurgent groups now launch equally dramatic and politically charged attacks. For example, a second explosion at the Samara mosque in June 2007, which destroyed the shrine's minarets and sparked a wave of revenge attacks on Sunni mosques nationwide, may have been an inside job. U.S. military officials said fifteen uniformed men from the Shiite-run Iraqi Security Forces were arrested for suspected involvement in the attack.
Second, it remains unclear whether the original Samara bombing was itself the work of AQI. The group never took credit for the attack, as it has many other high-profile incidents. The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein. (His right-hand man, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, was also a former military intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army.) Key features of the bombing did not conform to the profile of an AQI attack. For example, the bombers did not target civilians, or even kill the Shiite Iraqi army soldiers guarding the mosque, both of which are trademark tactics of AQI. The planners also employed sophisticated explosive devices, suggesting formal military training common among former regime officers, rather than the more bluntly destructive tactics typical of AQI. Finally, Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency. Frank "Greg" Ford, a retired counterintelligence agent for the Army Reserves, who worked with the Army in Samara before the 2006 bombing, says that the evidence points away from AQI and toward a different conclusion: "The Baathists directed that attack," says Ford.
Third, while some analysts believe that AQI drafts Baathist insurgents to carry out its attacks, other intelligence experts think it is the other way around. In other words, they see evidence of native insurgent forces coopting the steady stream of delusional extremists seeking martyrdom that AQI brings into Iraq. "Al-Qaeda can't operate anywhere in Iraq without kissing the ring of the former regime," says Nance. "They can't move car bombs full of explosives and foreign suicide bombers through a city without everyone knowing who they are. They need to be facilitated." Thus new foreign fighters "come through and some local Iraqis will say, 'Okay, why don't you go down to the Ministry of Defense building downtown.'" AQI recruits often find themselves taking orders from a network of former regime insurgents, who assemble their car bombs and tell them what to blow up. They become, as Nance says, "puppets for the other insurgent groups."
The view that AQI is neither as big nor as lethal as commonly believed is widespread among working-level analysts and troops on the ground. A majority of those interviewed for this article believe that the military's AQI estimates are overblown to varying degrees. If such misgivings are common, why haven't doubts pricked the public debate? The reason is that alternate views are running up against an echo chamber of powerful players all with an interest in hyping AQI's role.
The first group that profits from an outsize focus on AQI are former regime elements, and the tribal chiefs with whom they are often allied. These forces are able to carry out attacks against Shiites and Americans, but also to shift the blame if it suits their purposes. While the U.S. military has recently touted "news" that Sunni insurgents have turned against the al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar Province, there is little evidence of actual clashes between these two groups. Sunni insurgents in Anbar have largely ceased attacks on Americans, but some observers suggest that this development has less to do with vanquishing AQI than with the fact that U.S. troops now routinely deliver cash-filled duffle bags to tribal sheiks serving as "lead contractors" on "reconstruction projects." The excuse of fighting AQI comes in handy. "Remember, Iraq is an honor society," explains Juan Cole, an Iraq expert and professor of modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. "But if you say it wasn't us—it was al-Qaeda—then you don't lose face."
The second benefactor is the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, often the first to blame specific attacks on AQI. Talking about "al-Qaeda" offers the government a politically correct way of talking about Sunni violence without seeming to blame the Sunnis themselves, to whom they are ostensibly trying to reach out in a unity government. On a deeper level, however, the al-Maliki regime has very limited popular support, and the government officials and ruling Islamic Dawa Party feel an imperative to include Iraqi troubles in the broader "global war in terrorism" in order to keep U.S. troops in the country. In June, when faced with increasingly uncomfortable pressure from the Americans for his failure to resolve key political issues, al-Maliki warned that Iraqi intelligence had found evidence of a "widespread and dangerous plan by the terrorist al-Qaeda organization" to mount attacks outside of Iraq.
Elsewhere within the Shiite bloc of Iraqi politics, Moqtada al-Sadr has his own reasons for playing up the idea of AQI. "The Sadrists want to overstate the role of al-Qaeda in a way to emphasize on the 'foreignness' of the current problem in Iraq; and this easily fits their anti-occupation ideology, which seems to gain more popularity among Shia Iraqis on a daily basis," said Babak Rahimi, a professor of Islamic Studies and expert in Shiite politics at the University of California at San Diego.
Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain eager to take credit for the violence in Iraq, despite the bad blood that existed between bin Laden and AQI's slain founder, al-Zarqawi. They've produced a long series of taped statements in recent years taunting U.S. leaders and attempting to conflate their operations with the Sunni resistance in Iraq. "They want to bring this all together as a motivating tool to encourage recruitment," said Farhana Ali, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation.
The press has also been complicit in inflating the threat of AQI. Because of the danger on the ground, reporters struggle to do the kind of comprehensive field reporting that's necessary to check facts and question statements from military spokespersons and Iraqi politicians. Today, for example, U.S. reporters rarely travel independently outside central Baghdad. Few, if any, insurgents have ever given interviews to Western reporters. These limitations are understandable, if unfortunate. But news organizations are reluctant to admit their confines in obtaining information. Ambiguities are glossed over; allegations are presented as facts. Besides, it's undeniably in the reporter's own interest to keep "al- Qaeda attacks" in the headline, because it may move their story from A16 to A1.
Finally, no one has more incentive to overstate the threat of AQI than President Bush and those in the administration who argue for keeping a substantial military presence in Iraq. Insistent talk about AQI aims to place the Iraq War in the context of the broader war on terrorism. Pointing to al- Qaeda in Iraq helps the administration leverage Americans' fears about terrorism and residual anger over the attacks of September 11. It is perhaps one of the last rhetorical crutches the president has left to lean on.
This is not to say that al-Qaeda in Iraq doesn't pose a real danger, both to stability in Iraq and to security in the United States. Today multiple Iraqi insurgent groups target U.S. forces, with the aim of driving out the occupation. But once our troops withdraw, most Sunni resistance fighters will have no impetus to launch strikes on American soil. In that regard, al-Qaeda—and AQI, to the extent it is affiliated with bin Laden's network—is unique. The group's leadership consists largely of foreign fighters, and its ideology and ambitions are global. Al-Qaeda fighters trained in Baghdad may one day use those skills to plot strikes aimed at Boston.
Yet it's not clear that the best way to counter this threat is with military action in Iraq. AQI's presence is tolerated by the country's Sunni Arabs, historically among the most secular in the Middle East, because they have a common enemy in the United States. Absent this shared cause, it's not clear that native insurgents would still welcome AQI forces working to impose strict sharia. In Baghdad, any near-term functioning government will likely be an alliance of Shiites and Kurds, two groups unlikely to accept organized radical Sunni Arab militants within their borders. Yet while precisely predicting future political dynamics in Iraq is uncertain, one thing is clear now: the continued American occupation of Iraq is al-Qaeda's best recruitment tool, the lure to hook new recruits. As RAND's Ali said, "What inspires jihadis today is Iraq."
Five years ago, the American public was asked to support the invasion of Iraq based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to al-Qaeda. Today, the erroneous belief that al-Qaeda's franchise in Iraq is a driving force behind the chaos in that country may be setting us up for a similar mistake.
Andrew Tilghman was an Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper in 2005 and 2006. He can be reached at tilghman.andrew@gmail.com.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Surrender Should Not Be an Option
By Congressman Ron Paul 09/05/07 - --- -Faced with dwindling support of the Iraq War, the warhawks are redoubling their efforts. They imply we are in Iraq attacking those who attacked us, and yet this is not the case. As we know, Saddam Hussein, though not a particularly savory character, had nothing to do with 9/11. The neo-cons claim surrender should not be an option. In the same breath they claim we were attacked because of our freedoms. Why then, are they so anxious to surrender our freedoms with legislation like the Patriot Act, a repeal of our 4th amendment rights, executive orders, and presidential signing statements? With politicians like these, who needs terrorists? Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us? This seems the epitome of cowardice coming from those who claim a monopoly on patriotic courage.In any case, we have achieved the goals specified in the initial authorization. Saddam Hussein has been removed. An elected government is now in place in Iraq that meets with US approval. The only weapon of mass destruction in Iraq is our military presence. Why are we still over there? Conventional wisdom would dictate that when the "mission is accomplished", the victor goes home, and that is not considered a retreat. They claim progress is being made and we are fighting a winnable war, but this is not a view connected with reality. We can't be sure when we kill someone over there if they were truly an insurgent or an innocent Iraqi civilian. There are as many as 650,000 deaths since the war began. The anger we incite by killing innocents creates more new insurgents than our bullets can keep up with. There are no measurable goals to be achieved at this point.The best congressional leadership can come up with is the concept of strategic redeployment, or moving our troops around, possibly into Saudi Arabia or even, alarmingly enough, into Iran. Rather than ending this war, we could be starting another one. The American people voted for a humble foreign policy in 2000. They voted for an end to the war in 2006. Instead of recognizing the wisdom and desire of the voters, they are chided as cowards, unwilling to defend themselves. Americans are fiercely willing to defend themselves. However, we have no stomach for indiscriminate bombing in foreign lands when our actual attackers either killed themselves on 9/11 or are still at large somewhere in a country that is neither Iraq nor Iran. Defense of our homeland is one thing. Offensive tactics overseas are quite another. Worse yet, when our newly minted enemies find their way over here, where will our troops be to defend us? The American people have NOT gotten the government they deserve. They asked for a stronger America and peace through nonintervention, yet we have a government of deceit, inaction and one that puts us in grave danger on the international front. The American People deserve much better than this. They deserve foreign and domestic policy that doesn't require they surrender their liberties.
http://www.house.gov/paul
http://www.house.gov/paul
Sunday, September 02, 2007
My Story
By Army National Guard Spc. Eleonai "Eli" Israel
098/30/07 "Courage To Resist" --- - Two months ago, I took a stand that changed my life forever. As a Soldier, a JVB Protective Service Agent, and a Sniper with the Army who had been in Iraq for a year (running over 250 combat missions), I refused to continue to be a part of the occupation. I regret nothing. This is my story. Currently, as I write this I am sitting in Kuwait, on "stand-by" to return to the States sometime hopefully this week. After getting out of the brig last week, I’m now scheduled to be discharged from the Army within the month. I'm looking forward to joining forces with anti-Iraq-War movements, such as Courage to Resist and Iraq Veterans Against the War.
What led me to this place in my life?
Joining up, the first time
I joined the U.S. Marine Corps in the spring of 1999, the month of my 18th birthday.
I grew up in the custody of the state of Kentucky with little contact with my biological parents since I was 13. I had no family support system and ended up on the streets, doing what street kids do.
By 16, I had eased into hard drugs. I had not been to school since the first part of 9th grade, and I was short on about everything but street smarts, an untapped sense of ambition, and a tough guy attitude.
When I walked into the recruiting station I learned that in order to join the Corps, I would need either a high school diploma or a GED with a waiver—unless I also had certain college credits. When I told them that I was 16 and had only completed 8th grade, they quickly dismissed me, not expecting to see me again.
They were wrong.
Not only did I earn my GED, I also did a semester at the local college. A year and a half later the month I turned 18, March 1999, I walked back into the same recruiting station, spoke to the same recruiter, showed him my GED and my college transcripts and felt my first real sense of pride.
Thirteen weeks after arriving at Parris Island, I was changed forever. I graduated as the leader of a platoon squad with a meritorious promotion, and was now well on my way to a shining career as a Marine.
Then came September 11, 2001.
Re-enlisting for my country
Like many after September 11th I wanted to serve, again. I felt I owed something more to my country after my years of training. I trusted my president and my leadership to tell me the truth. I also trusted my own integrity. I knew that I would never willingly do anything that I knew to be immoral or wrong.
I re-enlisted in 2004—this time in the Army National Guard.
At the time I believed that those serving in the 'global war on terror' were doing so because they believed in what they were doing—not because they were under compulsion by a contract or retained by stop-loss. After having seen the situation on the ground, I now believe I was wrong. In 2006, I shipped out to Iraq.
In Iraq I was as a JVB Agent—the JVB (Joint Visitors Bureau) served as the protective service for "three star generals and above" and their "civilian equivalents". This included the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, their equivalents in a number of our "allied nations", and others. I trained for my job as part of this "special unit" prior to deployment, and I spent the majority of my tour in the company of the most powerful people connected to the "global war on terror".
Even as a JVB agent, my primary job was still infantry. On days when we didn't have any JVB missions, we would be called on for "search and cordon" operations and other infantry assignments. So, although I worked at the JVB, I was still on the roster of a sniper platoon tasked with various missions "outside the wire"—either as "sniper overwatch" or house raids.
I reasoned that my actions during these missions were justified in the name of "self-defense." However, I came to realize my perception was wrong. I was in a country that I had no right to be in, violating the lives of people, and doing so without regard to the same standards of dignity and respect that we as Americans hold our own homes and our own lives to.
Destroying lives
I have taken and/or destroyed the lives of people who were defending their families from being the "collateral damage" of the day. Iraqi boys are joining groups like "Al Qaeda" for the same reason street kids in the U.S. join the "Cribs" and the "Bloods". It’s about self protection, a sense of dignity, and making a stand.
The young man whose father and cousin we "accidentally" killed, and whose mother and siblings cry every time the tank rolls through the neighborhood, doesn't care who Osama Bin Laden is. The "militants" we attacked were usually no different than an armed neighborhood watch group who didn't trust their government. We didn’t trust the government either, and we put them in power!
Our own sacrifices, as tragic as they are (and they are tragic), are dwarfed in comparison to the carnage that has been brought on the Iraqi people.
"Success" in Iraq is not a matter of the number of coalition deaths "declining". Success would be an end of the catastrophe we have inflicted on a entire society, and restoration of dignity and sovereignty
Iraqis continue to die at a rate 10 to 20 times that of the coalition forces. In Baghdad alone, five years and $950 billion later, the population suffers power and water outages that last for weeks at a time. Meanwhile, we often impose martial law so that no one can leave. The day I saw myself in the hateful eyes of a young Iraqi boy who stared at me was the day I realized I could no longer justify my role in the occupation.
I envy the soldier who is able to see the injustice of this war from afar, and has the courage and conviction to take the stand against it. There will be those who criticize soldiers for being willing to weigh moral convictions against political ambition. What matters is making the stand. Whether you chose not to join the military in the first place, or you realized after joining that it fell short of the requisite levels of integrity, the moment you realize the truth is the moment to take a stand. My moment came with only three weeks of combat missions remaining during my one year in Iraq. Moral conviction has no timing.
Taking a stand
I informed my chain of command of my beliefs. I could tell from that first conversation that things were not going to go well. I told them that I believed our presence in Iraq was unlawful. I explained that I no longer believed in a policy of war and that I would file as a conscientious objector. Simply put, I could no longer in good conscience participate in a combat role against the Iraqi people.
Seconds after the words left my mouth, my life changed. Inside I had more peace than I had felt in over a year. I knew immediately that I had done the right thing. However, I was aggressively disarmed, confined, and shut off from contacting anyone, including family or an attorney.
I was illegally confined to a cot in an operations room, placed under 24 hour guard, and escorted to the bathroom before I was formally charged with refusal to follow an order two weeks later. I remained confined until I pled guilty (with little choice) less than a week after that. I was immediately sent to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait to serve 30 days in a military prison. I was just released from the brig the other day and I’m now in the process of being "kicked out" with an "Other Than Honorable" discharge. I regret nothing.
After I told my command my beliefs, and once they realized they couldn't intimidate me and that I was serious, they decided that it was going to become an "information war".
I had many anti-war friends from MySpace and other online networks that got wind that I was being mistreated and it circulated around the world, literally overnight. Before I knew it, I was dragged into the First Sergeant’s office and they began yelling and screaming about how their names were "all over the internet". They didn't try to deny what was being said about them—that I was being treated unfairly and that they refused to acknowledge my claim as a conscientious objector—they were simply mad about the exposure.
Military strikes back
The next day I was told that I had been "flagged" as an OPSEC (operational security) “concern”. No reason given. They were hostile and consumed with the task of making "an example" out of me, and they were looking for ways to ruin my reputation and credibility.
They spent days typing up pages of fabricated "counseling statements" to retroactively discredit my military record. The fact that there were no prior record of statements made these accusations obviously fake, and they knew it. They "needed more".
They demanded repeatedly all of my Internet user names and pass words—MySpace, personal email, everything. All under the threat that "more charges" would be brought against me if I refused.
They wanted to read my emails, all my blogs, everything, in an attempt to find something. Anything they could use to make it look like I had been giving out classified information. They wanted to charge me and ruin my credibility as much as possible, and they desperately needed to be able to justify my illegal confinement.
Two weeks later, when they finally realized that they were not going to be able to charge me with "divulging intel", they finally charged me with a series of "not following orders". Not only did these include my refusal to continue combat missions, but ridiculous stuff like "not standing at parade rest" and "being late for work". You get the picture.
My command eventually offered to "chapter me out" if I would immediately plead guilty to everything and accept a summary court martial. My options were clear. I could play ball, spend 30 days in a brig, and get my life back. Or I could let them put me back on a fully confined restriction for the next two months, while they took every opportunity to make an example of me—to show everyone in the battalion, "this is what happens if you oppose the war.”
I’ll let them think they won, for now.
Freedom
The truth will come out, and there is nothing they can do to hide it. The occupation is a disaster. I’m convinced that every day it continues that it makes America, and the Iraqis less safe.
Objecting to the war and standing up to the military was without question, one of the best decisions I have ever made. I made a stand that was the right one, and I have my freedom back as a bonus. Maybe ten years from now those of us resisting from within the military today will be seen as some of the first few to speak the truth and to follow up with action. Even now I have many to remind me that I'm not alone in my thinking, even a majority of Americans who know that all the pieces of this conflict simply don't add up.
Seek the truth. Make the stand
Please visit "Courage to Resist" website http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
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